by David Nobbs
‘What did they do?’ asked Kate eagerly, welcoming the distraction.
‘Drank lemonade,’ said Oliver.
‘I slept like a log,’ said Myfanwy. ‘I always do.’
‘I didn’t,’ said Enid. ‘I had dreams too. I dreamt there was someone moving about upstairs.’
Kate’s heart almost stopped.
Somehow Sunday passed, and of course nobody suspected, Kate was protected by the enormity of it all, it was hard to believe in anything of such enormity now, and especially the enormity of that, and it was hard to believe that you could feel such a stranger in your own family, sitting round your own cheerful little fire, with people who were your brothers and sisters yesterday and today were as distant from you as creatures from outer space.
Soon Kate was to feel even more distant from her family. That was after Gwyn had told her that he was going to the war. He told her the very next time they met. She shuddered with joy at the sight of him walking towards her past the floral clock. He avoided meeting her eye as he destroyed her world. She screamed at him for having fooled her. He held her very tight and said that he’d wanted to tell her, but hadn’t wanted anything to spoil that wonderful night. She calmed down then. She had no alternative. She dared not ruin their parting.
They met just twice more but his parents were back now, and there wasn’t time to find anywhere else to make love. Sandy fumblings in the dunes would have been unbearable after that night. They would have become children again.
They never did make love again. Gwyn died, along with twelve thousand other wasted patriots, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Maybe he’d had a premonition. Maybe that had been what he’d been seeing when he looked past her in that way she feared. Maybe that was why he’d seemed to have put the whole of his life into that night.
3 Timothy
SHE OPENED HER eyes just a fraction, very cautiously, and was amazed to see that daylight was streaming brightly into Ward 3C of Whetstone General Hospital. White clouds were scudding past, innocent little clouds riding boldly on the gale. Her memories of her night with Gwyn had taken all night. She must have played them in real time.
The realisation that he was dead was almost as great a shock as it had been at the time. She closed her eyes, as if to escape from it and, because she wasn’t trying to sleep, fell asleep instantly. She was awakened by the clanking of a trolley.
‘There you go, Mrs Critchley,’ said a cheery voice. ‘Nice poached egg for you today.’
‘I didn’t order a poached egg,’ said another voice, presumably Mrs Critchley’s. ‘I ordered continental.’
‘No, I’ve got the chitty here, love. You ticked poached egg.’
‘I did not and I am not your love,’ said Mrs Critchley stuffily.
‘Aren’t you? Sorry about that, ducks.’ The breakfast lady didn’t seem to have taken offence. ‘But I’ve got poached egg down and poached egg you’ll have to have.’
Mrs Critchley mumbled something.
‘What’s that, sweetheart?’ asked the breakfast lady.
‘I can’t afford a cooked breakfast,’ hissed Mrs Critchley.
‘Bless you, dear, you don’t have to pay. You’re in hospital.’
‘Oh. Am I? Sorry.’
The breakfast trolley clanked across the hard floor.
‘Bacon and sausage for you, Glenda,’ said the breakfast lady breezily. ‘There you go.’
‘That’s right. I’ve got to build my strength up,’ said a weak voice, presumably Glenda’s.
‘Good for you,’ said the breakfast lady.
The trolley clanked again.
‘Nice poached egg for you, Hilda,’ said the breakfast lady. ‘There you go.’
‘I couldn’t eat a poached egg,’ said an indignant Hilda.
‘Well, why did you order one then?’
Kate found, to her surprise, that she was getting quite interested in the saga of the breakfasts. Well, anything was better than the pain of Gwyn’s death.
‘I must have ticked the wrong item,’ said Hilda. ‘I’ve never been good with forms.’
‘Well, it says poached egg, and I’ve got nuffink for you but poached egg, so poached egg it’s going to have to be, I’m afraid, Hilda.’
‘I don’t like the look of it,’ said Hilda. ‘It looks as if it’s got a great big eye and it’s staring at me.’
‘Don’t be silly. Got to keep your strength up. That’ll slip down the red lane somethink lovely. Now, you just eat that up for me.’
The trolley clanked away. Kate could hear it disappearing down the corridor. No breakfast for her, evidently. Well, she didn’t know how she’d eat it if there was any.
So it seemed that there were just three other women in Ward 3C. Kate pictured Ward 3 as a long corridor with a series of small side wards off it. Ward 3C, she imagined, had four beds, two against each side wall. Of course she could be wrong. There might be empty beds which would be filled at some later stage. But she doubted it. Beds were at a premium in the NHS. She could imagine poor Elizabeth’s indignant voice. ‘Why on earth won’t you go private, Mum? Where’s the sense of it?’
Kate had identified the voice of the woman called Mrs Critchley as being that of the mad woman who thought she’d given birth to a baby boy. She imagined her as quite tall, very pale, and painfully thin, with bruised arms. Glenda and Hilda remained shadowy figures as yet, but seemed to have some potential as a double act.
She tried to sleep, but, because she was trying, sleep wouldn’t come. For just a moment she felt so full of self-pity that she didn’t want to live. That wouldn’t do.
She tried to begin to think of the task that she had set herself. It had been a bizarre murder. What was significant about the torn-off list of double-glazing salesmen? Who but Maurice would have had access to a name board from Leningrad railway station? Or could the name board have been fabricated? Oh Lord, she was tired. It was a hopeless task. How would she succeed where Inspector Crouch, thoroughness his middle name, had failed? She’d been a fool to even think she could do it. Oh Gwyn, were you really killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme?
Not necessarily! He didn’t have to be. Her body was imprisoned, but her mind was free and felt all the more free because her body was imprisoned. And the thought of her mind as a video had amused her because she knew how surprised young Ben would be that she’d understood the principle of the video machine at last. Come on, then, Kate, what are you waiting for? Rewind. Stop at the beginning of that night, the night. And play.
But before she could even begin to relive that night, the nurse called Helen brought her back to reality.
‘Well, have you had a good night?’ she asked, in tones that suggested that she didn’t think Kate a complete idiot. But again she spoilt this favourable impression by inventing the reply that she wanted to hear. ‘Oh, good. That’s good, Kate.’
Helen forced Kate’s mouth open as gently as she could and slid the thermometer in, and Kate had a fleeting vision of Walter and something larger and warmer than a thermometer sliding into her mouth, but that was far into the future, well, no, it was far in the past but it was far into the future of her journey through the past, well, she knew what she meant, and the memory of it had quite shocked her, recollected in cold blood at ninety-nine years of age.
Helen slid the thermometer out of her mouth. ‘Still up a bit, not quite there yet,’ she said.
And then Kate heard the voice of Doctor Ramgobi. ‘Well, Kate, and how are we this morning?’ He didn’t wait for a reply, but spoke to Helen. ‘Difficult to tell if there’s much going on in her brain. Far too early to give her an ECG or anything like that. What are we feeding her through these drips? Let’s have a look again.’
Of course. She was on drips. Maybe, in view of all the recent food scares, that was how the world would end up being fed. A lot of fun would have gone out of life, but at least we’d be spared all those celebrity chefs on television.
Doctor Ramgobi had moved on.
She heard him ask, ‘How are we today, Mrs Critchley?’
Why did so many of them have to use the plural? But Mrs Critchley accepted it as natural and said, ‘We’re very well, doctor. He’s just had his first feed of the day, and he’s such a bonny little thing.’
‘Jolly good,’ said Doctor Ramgobi. ‘That’s what we want to hear. Good morning, Glenda, and how are we today?’
‘Very well indeed, doctor. I feel ready to go home.’
‘Not just yet, Glenda. Not just yet. We’ve got to build up your strength first.’
‘But it’s the ironing, Doctor Rambogi.’
‘Ramgobi. The ironing?’
‘He doesn’t know one end of the iron from the other.’
‘Ah, we’re speaking of Douglas, are we? I spoke to Douglas when he was here yesterday and he’s doing just fine.’
‘He thinks he is, but he won’t care if his cuffs are creased. I always iron his underpants, doctor. He can never see the point. “Nobody’s going to see them,” he says. “You never know,” I say. “I’ve seen you looking at that schoolmistress at number seven.” Many’s the laugh we’ve had over that.’
‘I see, yes, jolly good, most droll. Ah, Hilda, and how are we today?’
‘Not so good, doctor, I’m afraid. I couldn’t swallow my egg.’
‘Dear dear. Think of all the pain that hen went through, and you so scornful of its end product!’
‘It’s my digestion, doctor. It’s worn out.’
‘Nonsense, Hilda. Fresh air is what you need. It’s a lovely day – for Whetstone. Nurse’ll take you twice round the block, and you’ll be attacking your lunch with gusto.’
Soon after that Kate fell asleep. She slept until lunch-time when she woke just enough to realise that Doctor Ramgobi had been wrong about one thing. Hilda was not attacking her lunch with gusto. ‘Mince and I have never really hit it off. I get so confused. I’m sure I meant to tick the cod.’ Kate drifted off again, woke up again, opened one eye, and saw Timothy standing there, looking down at her with concern and love, looking every inch the distinguished novelist that he wasn’t. She closed her eye again hurriedly. She hoped Timothy hadn’t seen. She didn’t want him to know how alert she was. Not yet, anyway. ‘Always keep your powder dry,’ Heinz had once said. An absurd phrase, but in his delicate, precise German accent it had sounded rather charming.
For a moment she wondered if she had really seen Timothy. Perhaps she’d started hallucinating. Old people did. But no, the other nurse, the one with the plump hands, was speaking. ‘Guess who’s here, Kate. It’s our son. He’s come all the way from Majorca to see us.’
‘Hello, Mum,’ said Timothy. He always called her Mum and he always wanted her to call him Tim. She thought it indicative of his intellectual laziness. All that intelligence, all that ingenuity, which could have been of such use to the world, wasted on writing those second-rate detective novels. Not that they sold badly. Once he’d got readers hooked, he wasn’t likely to lose them, since in essence he wrote the same book over and over again. ‘You know where you are with a Rand.’ ‘I always get Auntie Lizzie the latest Inspector Trouble for Christmas.’
But how fine he had looked in that moment when she had glimpsed him at the side of her bed. He was tall and, at seventy-two, still held himself quite erect. He had a good head of hair, even though he wore it too long, but its streaks of grey were quite dramatic and distinguished, some people thought he’d paid a lot to have them put in. He had a comfortable white beard which made him look like a cross between a philosopher and Father Christmas. He was wearing one of his usual lightweight denim suits. He had no spare flesh on his body at all. And the look on his face! She had never seen him looking as loving as that. She realised that he hadn’t noticed her looking at him, because, if he had, he’d have hidden his emotion.
He clasped her hand, she could still only just feel it, and said, ‘I don’t know if you can understand what I’m saying, Mum, but I’ll talk to you anyway. Nigel rang me and told me the bad news, and of course I flew over as soon as I could. Carrie wanted to come, but I said best not. You’re wrong about Carrie, you know. You aren’t often wrong, but you are about her.’
He suddenly let go of her hand and she thought, the nurse is back. He can’t let her see how fond of me he is. You’d never think he’d lived in Majorca for some thirty years. Nothing Spanish seems to have rubbed off.
She was right about the nurse’s return. ‘I’m just going to take our temperature, Kate.’ She was right about Carrie too. She wished she wasn’t. There were some very nice Australians. ‘Won’t be a jiffy,’ said the nurse. ‘And then I’ll leave you and Tim together. Isn’t he a nice son to come all the way from Majorca?’
‘Least I could do,’ mumbled Timothy.
The nurse slipped the thermometer out of Kate’s mouth and said, ‘Much the same. Nothing to worry about,’ and Kate expected her to go, but she didn’t, she said, ‘I’ve been to Majorca.’
‘Oh?’ Timothy wasn’t really interested, and Kate thought, You’d be a better writer, Timothy, if you were more interested in people.
‘Magaluf. It’s nice there, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, I’ve never been to Magaluf!’ The scorn in his voice was only just held back by good manners.
‘What?? And you live there! That’s amazing. No, it was really great. I hardly went to bed all week.’
‘Ah, well, I live in Deya, which is in the North. It’s very pretty and very quiet.’
‘Oh, well, you can’t have everything, can you?’
‘Erm, could I have a word?’
They moved away from the bed towards the door, and Timothy said, in a low voice, ‘Is this what my mother’s usually like?’ but she had very good hearing and could still hear every word.
‘Well, yeah, I mean, she hasn’t been in long, know what I mean?’ said the nurse. ‘She has had . . .’ She lowered her voice even more, but Kate could still hear. ‘ . . . a massive stroke. It’ll take time. It’s bound to, know what I mean? Tell yer one thing, though. There’s something going on. She was dreaming a hell of a lot last night.’ The nurse returned to the bedside, perhaps to cover herself in case Kate had heard. ‘I was just telling Tim you was dreaming a lot last night. Good dreams they was too, from the sound of them.’
It was odious to hear the nurse talk like that about her night with Gwyn. Why couldn’t Timothy say, ‘Nurse, my mother is a woman of great sensitivity, delicacy and style. For her, sex is a matter of private passion and public discretion.’ Why couldn’t he show some of his mother’s famous spunk? She had once heard a man say, of her, at a party, ‘That is one spunky lady, or I’m the Nawab of Pataudi.’ She couldn’t remember who had said it, but it hadn’t been the Nawab of Pataudi.
‘Yeah,’ continued the nurse. ‘It sounded as though wherever she was she was having a good time, know what I mean?’
‘Er . . . yes. I wonder which of them you’ve been thinking about, Mum.’
Colluding with the nurse! How could he? And only a minute ago she’d been thinking how snobbish he sounded about Majorca. Maybe she’d become a snob too. Maybe she’d always been one. Maybe he’d got it off her. She hated the thought.
The nurse departed at last, and he felt free to hold her hand again.
‘Mum?’ he said. ‘If you can understand me, give me a sign.’
She realised immediately that this was the defining moment of her time in hospital. She realised that she didn’t want to relate to people any more. Not yet, anyway. She could respond to her children so inadequately that it was better not to respond to them at all. She realised that she didn’t want to have to care about the other women in the ward. She realised that she didn’t want to have any kind of relationship with either of the nurses. She realised too, and surprised herself with the speed of the thought and its calculating nature, that, if she was serious about solving the murder, it might be useful if the suspects were off their guard with her. She gave no answering sign, therefore, to the second of her
sons. He sighed.
Then, sitting on what she assumed to be an inelegant and uncomfortable hospital chair – what a shock that would be to his fastidious backside – he said things to his mother that he would never have been able to say if she had had her eyes open, perhaps couldn’t even have said if he believed that she understood them.
‘I love you, Mum. I love you more than I can say. Nobody could have had a lovelier, prettier, more stimulating mother. It took me a long time to forgive you for Dad, but I did in the end, and later I think I came to believe that there was nothing to forgive. Well, I have to assume that you can’t understand this, but I think you’re terrific.’
She wanted to cry. She was human, after all. She longed to give him a sign, to squeeze his hand, if of course she was able to move her hand, she didn’t know about that. She gave no sign, and she suspected that he’d have been embarrassed if she had. But what an effort of will-power it was.
‘I know I’m not a priest,’ he said, to her astonishment, ‘but I absolve you utterly,’ and then he added, with that oh-so-British embarrassment which hadn’t faded even under the sun of Deya, ‘Oh, not that you need the last rites or anything like that. I’ve spoken to the nurse. The doctor’s very hopeful.’
She wanted to laugh, and to cry. She loved him when he was embarrassed, and it was so absurd of him to be embarrassed even when he’d become convinced that she couldn’t understand.
‘I’ve spoken to Nigel,’ he said. ‘He told me that you looked surprisingly good.’
Oh good. Maybe she did, though she doubted it.
‘As of course you do,’ he added a little too late. ‘I gather Nigel has spoken to Maurice and he’s on his way back from St Petersburg.’ Oh heavens, that sign from Leningrad station. ‘Oh, and I’ve left a message on Elizabeth’s answerphone. We think she must be away.’
He sat beside her in silence after that, for a long time. At first she wanted him to go, but then she got used to his presence. She was very fond of him, after all. He’d always done his best to be a good son, ‘within the context of ploughing my own furrow’, as he’d put it, though she’d thought that a rather wistful and self-deceiving description of his less-than-agricultural life.
