Going Gently

by David Nobbs

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘I wish you hadn’t said that,’ she said. ‘I think they must be the two most pathetic, overused words in the English language. “I’m sorry.” You will be sorry, Walter.’

  It was a statement, not a threat.

  ‘I’ll never do such a thing again,’ he said.

  ‘Too right you won’t,’ she said, ‘because I won’t be here. I’m leaving you.’

  That really shook him. He hadn’t expected that. He came towards her over the thick carpet.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ she screamed.

  He shrank back from her hostility. He’d gone white, absolutely white.

  ‘How did you find out?’ he croaked.

  ‘Len Goldstone told me.’

  Maurice began to cry. Kate hurried across the huge expanse of the drawing-room, up the wide impressive staircase of the pseudo-medieval, post-Lutyens house, along the suburban imitation of a feudal corridor, into Maurice’s bedroom.

  Walter followed her. He wasn’t a maker of pistons now. He was a lap-dog.

  She whipped out her left breast and began to feed the scrawny infant. He gurgled with pleasure at the beginning of the milk.

  Walter stood there, silent, watching. Nigel and Timothy were sleeping soundly, in the huge bedrooms. The house was silent.

  ‘This is what my breasts are for now, Walter,’ she said. ‘From now on they will be put to good use. Practical use. You must approve of that. You’re a practical man.’

  ‘I suppose it didn’t occur to you that Len Goldstone might be lying,’ said Walter.

  ‘I don’t want to speak about it while I’m feeding Maurice,’ she said. ‘It’ll be a miracle if my milk hasn’t gone sour already.’

  But Kate’s milk had not gone sour. Maurice drank appreciatively then fell fast asleep. Kate kissed his forehead, wiped the tears from her eyes, blew her nose, and went slowly downstairs into what she called the drawing-room and Walter called the lounge because he thought drawing-room was pretentious, as if the great thick fabric of the curtains and settees and chairs wasn’t pretentious, being the nearest thing to the Bayeux Tapestry that you could buy without leaving Solihull.

  He was drinking whisky.

  ‘Decanter in extremis,’ she said.

  ‘Is that Latin?’

  ‘No. It’s Kate. It means, “When in trouble, hit the bottle”.’

  He pushed the decanter towards her. She shook her head.

  ‘You asked me if I thought Len Goldstone might be lying,’ she said. ‘Yes, I did. I knew you’d sacked him. I knew he’d be bitter and resentful.’

  ‘I don’t see why. I had to do it. We aren’t out of the depression yet.’

  ‘I don’t see much sign of it in this room. Sorry. We don’t need to debate the ethics of management now. You’ll be spared all that.’

  ‘I don’t want to be spared all that, Kate. I don’t want you to go. I love you.’

  ‘You’ve a funny way of showing it. I need tea. I need tea desperately.’

  She went into the kitchen. It was a room on a scale that could have provided a banquet for the court of Henry VIII. He followed her. He was looking a little more relaxed. He believed that she was softening. Let him believe. Let him dream.

  They sat at the kitchen table, she with her tea in a Wedgwood mug, he with his whisky in a cut glass. The table was too large. Everything in the house was too large.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kate, ‘I did think Len Goldstone might be lying.’

  ‘Then why did you tell me you knew I’d been sleeping with Helen Winch?’

  ‘To hear you say, “Darling! Of course I haven’t!” But you didn’t, did you? You went as white as a sheet, went down on your knees, and said, “I’m sorry.”’

  She saw him thinking, If only I’d bluffed it out. She hated him at that moment.

  She let the silence last for quite a while. He didn’t dare interrupt it. He felt, she knew, that time was on his side.

  ‘I’ll leave in the morning,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, Kate, don’t be silly. Please. We can work this thing through.’

  ‘You went from the maternity ward, to be with her!’

  ‘I’ve said I’m sorry.’

  ‘That doesn’t make much difference.’

  ‘It would never have happened if you hadn’t been pregnant, Kate.’

  ‘I can’t believe that remark. It’s like saying that you wouldn’t have looted the shop if all the glass hadn’t blown out of the windows.’

  ‘I know it sounds awful, Kate, but the truth is I’m a highly sexed man.’

  ‘Well, I know that, but I did think that it was me that aroused you to those heights. I didn’t think a secretary from Head Office would do the same thing for you. Did she wrap her legs round your face in the early hours? Did your tongue stimulate her clitoris?’

  ‘Kate!’ He was very shocked.

  ‘Doing it’s all right but talking about it is dirty, is that it?’ she asked.

  ‘No, but . . . I don’t like talking about it like that in cold blood. These things are personal.’

  ‘I had hoped so,’ she said icily, and paused to let him realise just how comprehensively he was being outmanoeuvred. ‘You don’t know about such things when you’re a chapel girl from Wales. Arturo didn’t do such things. You don’t read about such things. I found it extraordinary, wonderful, because it seemed such an intimate thing to do. If I thought you’d done those things to her I’d kill you. No, I wouldn’t. Let’s not be silly.’

  ‘You can’t leave,’ he said. He waved his arms at the magnificence of the house. ‘You can’t lose all this.’

  ‘All this? Do you think I care about all this? This isn’t a home. It’s a statement.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t feel crude and ignorant in your presence?’

  ‘I didn’t want you to feel those things. I never thought you crude or ignorant. I thought you wonderful. I thought you wonderful, Walter. My wonderful, wonderful Walter. That’s what you’ve destroyed.’

  She banged her empty cup on the draining board and strode back into the drawing-room.

  ‘All this!’ she said, waving her arms scornfully. ‘I never liked it. I only liked you.’

  ‘But how will you live?’

  ‘Splendidly. Proudly. Richly.’

  ‘But what on?’

  ‘That’s right. Reduce it to money. Everything boils down to money in the end with you, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, yes, crude materialistic, uncultured Walter, we all know that, but you have three children, you have to have money.’

  ‘You’ll offer me what I need. You aren’t mean.’

  ‘That’s true.’ He sounded crestfallen. ‘Yes, I’ll support you.’

  Kate went over to the great windows and pulled back the thick curtains. She wanted to look at the night, even though there was nothing to see. She felt at one with the darkness. She wanted to wrap herself in it, and never be seen again.

  ‘I said you’d offer me what I need,’ she said. ‘I didn’t say I’d take it.’

  ‘Oh, Kate. No false pride, please.’

  ‘False pride? You think it false pride to believe that what I have given to you doesn’t deserve betrayal?’

  She could feel him behind her. For one awful moment she thought he was going to attempt to achieve reconciliation in sex. Then she realised that he didn’t even dare touch her. When she turned to face him, he flinched.

  She walked past him and sank into the larger of the two settees. It would be an exaggeration to say that he joined her on it. True, he did sit on the same settee, but it was so vast that if they’d stretched out their arms to each other, their fingers wouldn’t have touched.

  She realised that he was winding himself up for one last appeal. She tried to pre-empt it.

  ‘If you sold one of the settees you could reinstate Len Goldstone,’ she said.

  He waved away this irritating irrelevance.

  ‘Kate!�
�� he implored. ‘I know what I did was wrong, but . . . you’ve told me yourself you’ve been a naughty lady.’

  ‘No, Walter,’ she said. She leapt to her feet angrily and stood over him. He seemed to have shrunk and shrivelled, as if he’d been left out in the rain overnight. The last time they had been to the theatre had been to see The Importance of Being Earnest in Birmingham. He’d marvelled at its wit and elegance. He’d told her that she could have played the part of Lady Bracknell. Well, she would play it now. Her last performance for him would be her finest. ‘No, Walter,’ she said. ‘I am not a naughty lady. I am a sexy lady. The two are very different. I am aware of the difference. That is my tragedy. You are not aware of the difference. That is yours.’

  She strode from the room.

  ‘I can change,’ he mumbled to her wake.

  ‘No, Walter, you will never change,’ she told him scornfully.

  In that, she did him a grave injustice. Once again she had proved an incompetent prophet.

  But that’s another story.

  7 Elizabeth

  A SMALL LUNCHEON party was held in Ward 3C of Whetstone General Hospital on Friday 15 October 1999. Present were Mrs Kate Copson (paralysed), Mrs Glenda Harrington (dying), Miss Hilda Mandrake (lonely) and Mrs Angela Critchley (mad as a hatter).

  Mrs Angela Critchley, née Wilmot, had chosen ham salad (wet ham, undressed salad) followed by fruit salad (tinned). Presented with this salad spectacular, she refused to take any of it. She believed that she was in the Spa Hotel, Buxton, and she was frightened because she couldn’t afford to pay.

  The thoughts of Mrs Glenda Harrington, née Barker, had turned to the cottage pie (freeze-dried and sent from Cardiff), followed by the sponge pudding with custard (tinned). She was anxious to be seen to eat a hearty meal, in order to persuade Doctor Ramgobi that she was fit to return home. She found the cottage pie delicious but too rich, and could only manage five mouthfuls. She found the sponge pudding delicious, but too heavy. She could only manage two mouthfuls. She covered the remainder of the sponge pudding with the custard in order to make it look as if she had eaten more than she had.

  Miss Hilda Mandrake, née Mandrake, had plumped for the parsnip bake, followed by the cheese (processed) and biscuits (stale and limp). On being presented with these delicacies, she denied having chosen them, intimating to fat Janet, née thin Janet, that parsnips gave her wind, they always had, even in her palmier days, and cheese gave her nightmares. If she had ticked these items, it was in error. She couldn’t vouch for the consequences if she ate them in her present circumstances. A mixture of dreams and dyspepsia might make it a disturbed afternoon for the rest of the ward. On being told that there was no alternative, she ate just enough to keep alive, but not sufficient to suggest, she hoped, even to Doctor Ramgobi, that she was fit enough to go home. Janet removed the remains of Hilda’s meal, and scoffed the lot in the office.

  Kate Copson, née Thomas, had been spared the difficulty of choosing between all these mouth-watering offerings, as she was on drips and had no idea what was being fed into her.

  Mrs Glenda Harrington rebuked Miss Hilda Mandrake for referring to the subject of wind. It was not a suitable subject for ladies at any time, she intimated, let alone during luncheon.

  Miss Hilda Mandrake, to her eternal credit, refrained from pointing out to Mrs Glenda Harrington that she was a fine one to talk, since she broke wind regularly and noisily during the long reaches of the night.

  Mrs Angela Critchley informed them that she had not thought much of the menu. The Spa Hotel had gone down and she would complain to the manager. She had booked a single room, and she had had to share it with three other women, one of whom broke wind, another of whom talked about breaking wind, while the third had given birth to a baby boy who would soon, no doubt, be breaking wind himself. It was inexplicable, unless the hotel had recently become a Moat House.

  Mrs Kate Copson said nothing. She listened, made a few deductions and a few guesses, and compiled the above report in her head. It amused her, and helped her to forget the agonising break-up of her marriage to Mr Walter Copson.

  At 1.25 p.m. Mrs Kate Copson finished her report and settled down to go to sleep.

  When she woke up, she had no idea where she was. Somebody was holding her hand, and she didn’t know who it was. She was on the point of opening her eyes, to see where she was and who it was, when the clank of a trolley in the corridor and a stirring of the ward’s fetid breath reminded her that she was in hospital, reminded her not to reveal that she could understand what was going on.

  Whose hand was it? She found herself thinking about what it must be like to be blind, to see only blackness every second of every moment of every day of your life, and a great thrill of thankfulness swept through her body. The unidentified owner of the hand must have felt this tremor and misunderstood it, for the hand gripped Kate’s hand more tightly.

  ‘Ah! You’re awake,’ said Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth! Her little girl! The apple of her eye! The disappointment of her life! How she longed to open her eyes just for a moment and gaze at that beloved face, lined now but still attractive, ‘pretty, but not as pretty as her mother’. Where was the harm? Did it really make sense to carry on with this enormous pretence? Yes. She hadn’t the energy to relate to people any more. Have you ever tried, gentle reader, to keep your eyes closed for any length of time? It becomes more and more difficult. The feeling of pressure mounts. To open them, even if only for a second, becomes irresistible. Kate was prepared to keep her eyes closed all day. What will-power, in a lady of ninety-nine. What strength. What weakness, too. Two parts strength, one part weakness, and just a dash of whatever she was getting through her drips. The cocktail of Kate’s hospital life.

  ‘We were in Spain,’ said Elizabeth. ‘The phone was on the blink. We thought we’d told Nigel. Obviously we hadn’t. We’ve grown a bit careless about things. We’ve come to think of you as immortal, you see.’

  Kate felt a little tremor run through Elizabeth’s hand as she realised that she had made a bit of a faux pas in speaking on the assumption that Kate was dying. She was grateful to Elizabeth for not continuing, not saying, ‘Oh, not that you’re dying, of course!’, as Timothy would have. That was Elizabeth for you. Not intelligent enough to avoid the faux pas, but intelligent enough not to make things worse by continuing. ‘Bright, but not as bright as her mother.’ Poor Elizabeth. You never stood a chance. Elizabeth had inherited Heinz’s sandy hair, and her mother’s brown eyes. Nobody knew where her comfortable chunkiness had come from.

  Heinz had chosen the name. ‘It’s quintessentially English,’ he had said. He loved England, even after what England did to him. ‘Our English rose,’ he’d called Elizabeth. ‘Our princess.’ Strictly speaking, of course, he should have said ‘Our German-Welsh rose’, but it wouldn’t have had the same ring.

  The English rose, still flowering though in need of careful pruning and watering, squeezed Kate’s hand. Kate decided that the feeling was coming back to her hands. It didn’t seem as though Elizabeth was on the far side of the room, as it had when Nigel had visited.

  ‘The boys tell me that they don’t think you can understand what we say,’ she said. The boys! They were seventy-four, seventy-two and sixty-seven! ‘But I’m not prepared to take that risk. I’d hate you to be waiting for me to say I love you, and me never to say it. So I’ll say it, Mum. I love you. I love you so much. Terence sends his love too, incidentally.’

  Terence was Elizabeth’s second husband. He had two grown-up children. So did she. He was slightly pompous, somewhat dull, aware of it, sorry about it, but unable to do anything about it. ‘Every other Terence I know gets called Terry,’ he’d said once. ‘I can’t seem to break the Terry barrier.’ ‘You don’t want to,’ Kate had said. ‘You’d be horrified to be a Terry.’

  Terence had taken early retirement from his business as a designer of fitted kitchens, though he still did the occasional job for somebody rich enough to be worth g
iving up golf for. He was sixty-three. Elizabeth was sixty-one. And she still referred to her brothers as ‘the boys’! That made Kate want to smile. Elizabeth wouldn’t see anything funny in it. She hadn’t much sense of humour. ‘It’s the German in her,’ people said, and that infuriated Kate, because Heinz had had a dry, wry wit of a continental kind. He used to say things like ‘I sued the travel agent last year. Well, I saw Naples and didn’t die’, which amused some people and left others cold.

  Kate’s pleasant memories of her third husband were rudely interrupted when Hilda farted loudly.

  ‘Hilda!’ said Glenda.

  Again, Hilda resisted the temptation to turn on Glenda and point out that she regularly farted through the night. All she said was, ‘I knew I shouldn’t have had the parsnip bake.’ Kate thought that Hilda would be desperate not to fall out with Glenda, because Glenda was the nearest thing to a friend that she’d got.

  ‘You are stubborn, Mother,’ said Elizabeth.

  Kate understood the thought process that had led Elizabeth to say this. She had thought, Good God, after all you’ve lived through and achieved, surely you needn’t be stuck here in this fetid ward with these windy women when you could have gone private, if it hadn’t been for those damned principles of yours, which are stupid anyway, because you’d help the NHS more by paying than by using up their resources.

  I got my principles from my father, replied Kate silently to what Elizabeth hadn’t said, even though my life has been so different from his and if he knew the half of what I’ve got up to he’d be turning in his grave, so I can’t do anything about my principles, thank you very much.

  A wave of love for her father consumed Kate. Elizabeth’s strong golfing hand clasped her frail one more tightly, too tightly.

  ‘Oh, am I hurting?’ said Elizabeth, loosening her grip.

  Elizabeth remained silent for a while after that. Kate wished that she’d go, so that she could begin to think about her time with Heinz.

  Kate drifted in and out of sleep after that, and backwards and forwards in time. She recalled, with pleasure and amazement, the intensity and variety of her lovemaking with Walter. It was odd that she could remember so little about her second wedding day. It had been such a quiet wedding that there shouldn’t have been much to forget. She remembered that she’d refused to wear white, on the grounds that she wasn’t a virgin because she’d been married before. She hadn’t told anyone that she’d been going to bed with Walter regularly for more than three months.