Going Gently

by David Nobbs

  ‘Well, how about the Black Mountain?’

  ‘The Black Mountain would do very nicely,’ said John Thomas Thomas.

  ‘He misses his runs,’ said Bronwen. ‘We don’t get so many of them now Bernard’s not been so well and Oliver doesn’t come.’

  ‘It’s a shame Oliver doesn’t come any more.’

  ‘Oliver’s been a better son to us than anyone has a right to expect,’ said John Thomas Thomas sternly. ‘Every year for nearly twenty years he took us for a holiday.’

  ‘He’s building a new life,’ said Bronwen. ‘Surely you don’t begrudge him that?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Kate. ‘I just wish he wasn’t building his new life with someone who looks down on us.’

  ‘For shame, Kate,’ said her mother. ‘What will your father think?’

  ‘I missed what she said,’ said John Thomas Thomas, fiddling with his deaf aid. ‘I can’t get this contraption to work very well.’

  Kate and her mother exchanged looks. Kate was astonished. She had never heard her father tell a lie before. Bronwen was not astonished. She was with him most of the time.

  Kate went to the Kardomah and the market and got salty, smelly Swansea into her nostrils. The planners were beginning the task of rebuilding the town. Only Kate herself could rebuild her life. Who’ll make the better job of it, she wondered, as she sat in the Kardomah and let the tide of gossip wash around her.

  After lunch they got into Kate’s Hillman Minx. It was half day at the High School and Enid was able to come too. It was a tremendous squash in the back for Enid and Bronwen and Annie, but they managed it. It was difficult to get John Thomas Thomas into the front, but they managed it.

  Kate drove off, up, up and up through Pontardawe and Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen and Brynaman. How proud and neat the little houses were, with decorative patterns of brick round all the windows to soften their severity. These were solid houses, built for God-fearing people, which was just as well, because they were dwarfed by the stern square chapels built at either end of the street for them to fear Him in.

  After Brynaman, they climbed up on to the bare, black hill. A frail pied wagtail with its looping flight had no difficulty keeping pace with them.

  ‘This time next week I’ll be in Switzerland,’ said Annie. ‘My first trip abroad. I daresay our hills will seem quite small when I get back.’

  ‘Gwen Jones slipped on the snow outside Grindelwald and hurt her hip,’ said Enid.

  Well, at least it’s not a death this time, thought Kate.

  ‘Doctor Morris thought it was nothing, but it was the beginning of the end,’ said Enid. ‘She was dead before Christmas.’

  At the summit Kate parked. Skylarks were singing and tumbling. She walked over the dung-rich sheep-cropped grass to a modest stone set at the side of the road. It bore the message ‘David Davies age 22 of Glynclawdd Farm, Gwynfa was killed on this spot on 21st May 1884. His horse bolted and he fell under the wheel of his cart which was laden with lime.’ On the other side was the same message in Welsh. Unlucky David Davies, four years older than Gwyn. Lucky David Davies, though, to be remembered bilingually after sixty-eight years. Not much use to him, though, or to the girl whose loins grew moist at his approach and who is not remembered at all.

  As they began to descend, the road turned a corner and there, spread out before them below the bleak mountain, was the astonishing beauty of mid-Wales, the green breasts of her rounded hills, the open welcome of her deep valleys, a land rich and soft and deep and green and steep and smiling. The road was steep too, and they came to a hairpin bend.

  ‘It’s sad when children grow up,’ said Annie.

  John Thomas Thomas frowned. Annie’s sentimentality irked him. But Kate understood the thought process behind Annie’s remark. She had thought, I’m scared, but I can’t say anything. If Elizabeth had still been little, she’d have been here, and I’d have said, ‘We’re coming to a hairpin bend, Elizabeth. They’re the sharpest bends there are. Watch Mummy change gear and go very slowly.’

  The road ran beside a mountain stream. The rushing stream reminded Kate of children growing up. You only have one childhood. Don’t wish it away. Linger, laughing water. Linger on these hills where you are young and beautiful and clear. Don’t hurtle to get lost in the vast, salty, murky anonymity of the ocean.

  They had tea in the Cawdor Arms, there’s posh. They had toasted teacakes and scones and Welsh cakes and bara brith. What a tea it was. Kate insisted on paying and left a shilling for the waitress.

  As they were walking out after their tea, John Thomas Thomas waved away all help with a spasm of irritation. ‘I don’t need any more than my stick,’ he said, ‘and one day I won’t need that.’ Oh proud John Thomas Thomas. You couldn’t be seen needing to be helped out of the leading hotel in Llandeilo.

  In the otherwise deserted foyer, a seed merchant was trying to sell seed to a customer.

  ‘It’s on occasions like this that I really miss Dilys,’ said Kate.

  Her mother gasped and grabbed hold of her and said, ‘Oh, Kate!’

  ‘She’d have enjoyed that tea so much. You’re so kind, all of you, but she was my identical twin. She would have helped me so. Why did she have to die?’

  Tears ran down her face, and her mother’s. Tears ran down Enid’s face too. And tears poured down Annie’s face, tears privileged to cry with this family. The four women clasped each other in the middle of the foyer of the Cawdor Arms and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. John Thomas Thomas leant on his stick and watched with astonishment. The seed merchant said, ‘We’re developing a strain of turnip that is entirely resistant to disease of every kind,’ but he had lost his audience.

  11 Lily

  KATE WOKE TO the clanking of the breakfast trolley. Maurice’s words, ‘pretty disastrous concept, really, school’, flashed through her mind, and she thought, Pretty disastrous concept, really, hospital. What do you need least when you’re fighting for your life? Rotten food, bleak walls, and the retching, spitting, gobbing, belching, farting, bleeding, screaming and moaning of the seriously ill.

  This morning, though, it seemed very quiet in the ward, and she realised why. Hilda had gone home. It seemed impossible that Hilda could ever have made sufficient impression on anything for her absence to cause even a ripple, but Kate did feel a sharp sense of loss for this woman whom she had never seen and only heard. And she suspected that Glenda and Mrs Critchley felt it as well. Glenda was grumbling, of course. ‘Why didn’t he send me home instead of her? He hasn’t a clue. You contribute all your life to the NHS, and what do you get? Sheer incompetence. When I get out of here I’m going to complain all the way to the House of Lords. This nation is going to be sorry for its treatment of Glenda Carrington.’ And then Mrs Critchley joined in. ‘The York ham at breakfast was so succulent in the old days. The smoked haddock was oak-smoked. Now it’s all dyed. Water oozes out of the bacon. Oozes. I’ll come with you to the House of Lords.’ ‘Quite right,’ said Glenda. ‘The women of this land are on the march.’ She began to sing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ in a wavery screech. ‘Hush!’ said Mrs Critchley softly. ‘You’ll wake the little one.’

  A nurse came to give Kate her morning ablutions. This one seemed gentle and caring but she was a stranger. It was much worse having these dreadful humiliations performed upon her by strangers. Kate summoned up all her will-power and retreated from Ward 3C into pleasant recollections of the marvellous sex she’d enjoyed with Walter. If the nurse could have seen into the mind of the wrinkled old woman, seen her being taken by Walter from the front and from the back and from the side in rooms to the front and back and side of Copson Towers! If the nurse could have known that she was remembering the joy that Kate of the Two Settees had experienced in making love on both settees! Joy, delight, the pleasure of giving, the thrill of the partner’s pleasure. Togetherness. Oneness. What could be unnatural or shameful in any of that, between committed lovers, even for a chapel girl?

  And that, all that, w
as what she had thrown away, through the naivety, the vanity, the sheer stupidity of her behaviour with Red Ron Rafferty. If she hadn’t been so stupid, Walter and she would never have been divorced, she wouldn’t have married Graham, Graham wouldn’t have been murdered, she wouldn’t be fast approaching the longed-for, dreaded moment when she had to try to discover which of her three dear sons was a murderer. Oh, Kate! If only you could wind back to 1952 and play a different story for the last forty-seven years of your life. Even videos have their limitations.

  She tried to get back to sleep, and was on the point of dropping off when she heard a familiar squeaking in the corridor, a squeaking which she had identified, over the days, as being from a hospital stretcher. Surely even the NHS wasn’t so poor that it couldn’t afford one can of WD40?

  She heard the stretcher come into the ward and she heard Helen – thank goodness for a nurse she knew – say, ‘Ladies, this is Lily Stannidge. Lily, meet Glenda Carrington, Angela Critchley and Kate Copson. You’ll make Lily feel at home here in Ward 3C, won’t you? Good. That’s good.’

  So Mrs Critchely was an Angela! Kate had been sure she would be. It was as it should be. It was redolent of palm courts and legendary muffins.

  The surprise was her name! Kate Copson! Surely that was wrong? She distinctly remembered being divorced from Walter and marrying again. Marrying some other fellow who . . . who . . . There was something funny about the marriage, she couldn’t remember . . . She couldn’t remember! There was a fog blowing in off the sea of her life, a fret blocking out all memory. Her brain was going. Oh Lord. She was sinking into the mists that had enveloped Angela Critchley. She was joining the ranks of the insane. Panic swept over her. Droplets of sweat broke out on her neck and thighs. She was so tired.

  She slept for most of the rest of the morning, and when she awoke the panic was over, the mists had cleared. But the incident had alarmed her. Maybe she was beginning to lose her wits. She’d better hurry, hurry on to Graham and the murder.

  Timothy came. She wished he hadn’t. She wanted to be alone. She was the Greta Garbo of the Bedpan.

  She couldn’t go straight on to her fifth marriage. There was the evening of the private view. Perhaps the vital clue would lie in that amazing evening. If only he’d go. The moment he left, she’d whip off back to the Corncrake Gallery.

  She wondered if he was writing his new book as he sat there. Trouble in the Ward, the latest saga in the life of his unbelievable hockey-playing policeman with a taste for cassoulet, Bizet and Goya.

  If only he’d go. She needed to prepare herself for her visit to the Corncrake Gallery. So many people that she knew would be there. She needed to be at her best.

  At last Timothy pressed her hand and said, ‘Bye, Mum. Chin up, old girl,’ and was gone.

  Almost immediately, Doctor Ramgobi came in to do his rounds. Kate tried not to listen to him, but it was impossible.

  ‘Hello, Lily,’ he said, ‘are we nice and comfortable?’

  ‘I’m not schizophrenic,’ said Lily Stannidge, who sounded well-spoken without affectation. ‘There’s only one of me.’

  ‘Right. Sorry. Jolly good,’ said Doctor Ramgobi. He conducted a few low rumbles with the nurse and then moved on. Kate knew that he’d moved on because he said, ‘And how is Glenda this evening?’

  ‘You know how Glenda is this evening,’ said Glenda. ‘Glenda is very well this evening. Glenda is very well every evening. I must go home, Doctor Rambogi. Douglas can’t cope.’

  ‘Ramgobi. I spoke to Douglas yesterday. He’s coping very well.’

  ‘Room service!’ called out Mrs Critchley.

  ‘In a moment, Mrs Critchley,’ said Doctor Ramgobi. ‘Sorry, Glenda. No, Douglas is coping. He said ironing is like riding a bicycle. It soon comes back. And he’d made himself a boeuf bourguignon. Does that suggest he’s not coping?’

  ‘Doctor, I don’t want to be rude,’ said Glenda. ‘I’m no racist, but you don’t understand the English, even if you do come from Huddersfield. My husband is an Englishman. He doesn’t say what he thinks. He doesn’t say what he means, you halfwit.’

  ‘Glenda . . .’

  ‘Room service!’

  ‘In a minute, Mrs Critchley. Glenda, Douglas . . .’

  ‘No, I’m sorry if it’s rude, Dr Rambogi, but it’s the truth and it has to be said. The English are a very advanced form of civilisation. They throw up smokescreens. When my husband says, “I’m coping,” he doesn’t mean, “I’m coping,” you stupid little black man, he means, “Help me, for God’s sake.” He’s English.’

  ‘Well, Glenda,’ said Doctor Ramgobi with unremitting courtesy, ‘I shall bear that in mind and question him thoroughly.’

  ‘That’s more like it. Test him. Try to trick him. Ask him what he puts in his precious bœuf bourguignon.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s a good tip. I shall do that.’

  Doctor Ramgobi moved on. Kate knew that he’d moved on because she heard him say, ‘So how’s Mrs Critchley this evening?’

  ‘Hungry,’ said Mrs Critchley. ‘I’ve been calling room service for hours. Can you fetch them for me?’

  ‘I am room service,’ said Doctor Ramgobi, lowering his voice for fear that the rest of the ward would hear him and start ordering things. Kate could still hear him, though. Her hearing was as sharp as ever.

  ‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ said Angela Critchley.

  ‘What can I get you?’ asked Doctor Ramgobi smoothly.

  ‘What sandwiches do you have?’

  ‘Chicken, ham, prawn, smoked salmon, salad and cheese,’ said Doctor Ramgobi without hesitation.

  ‘I’ll have smoked salmon, please.’

  ‘On white or brown or granary?’

  ‘On white, please. Granary has bits that get in my false teeth, and everything’s brown these days, isn’t it? Bread, sugar, staff. It’s a fad.’

  ‘One smoked salmon on white,’ said Doctor Ramgobi, and he moved on. Kate knew that he’d moved on, because he stopped right by her bed. He mumbled to the nurse, but Kate could still hear every word.

  ‘No great change. Slight improvement if anything. No reason to change any of the medication. She’s putting up a magnificent fight, Helen. Magnificent. You know, I wish I could talk to her just once.’

  ‘We all do, doctor,’ said Helen. ‘Got right under our skin she has, somehow.’

  Kate was absurdly grateful to hear that.

  ‘I asked my dad about her,’ Helen continued. ‘You know, after you told me she was the Kate Copson. My dad said he’d forgotten about her, but it brought it all back. She was quite a woman, he said, specially for her age.’

  ‘Yes, yes, she was.’

  Doctor Ramgobi and Helen moved on. Kate knew that they had moved on because she heard Lily Stannidge say, in a near whisper, ‘May I have a word before you go, doctor?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Doctor Ramgobi. A note of wariness had crept into his voice.

  ‘Something nice. Praise.’

  ‘Ah. Well, we never mind that,’ said Doctor Ramgobi.

  ‘I’ve travelled a lot,’ said Lily Stannidge. ‘All round the world. I’ve met people of all colours, white, black, brown, yellow. I just wanted to say, because I heard what that horrid woman over there said, there are good and bad people of all colours and all races.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But what I really wanted to say was, these new stabilisers are wonderful.’

  ‘Stabilisers?’

  ‘Yes. There’s no movement at all. You wouldn’t even know you were on a ship.’

  12 Daniel

  ‘I’M SO WORRIED, Kate,’ Olga had confided on the phone. ‘I’m so worried that nobody will come to send off my poor Daniel in style.’

  In retrospect, of course, this worry seems absurd. Most of you will know what a sensation the exhibition was, how in one evening the reputation of an ignored artist was raised to a pedestal from which it has never slipped. A man who died of pneumonia, in a Spanish hospital,
surrounded only by his family, not even awarded an obituary in The Times, it’s hard to believe it now when the traces of Begelmanmania, or Begelmania, are still so clearly remembered.

  ‘I will come,’ Kate had promised. ‘I loved Daniel. Oh, not in a sexual way. Not really.’

  ‘He loved you in a sexual way.’

  ‘No. I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mind, Kate, because I knew it was a futile love, and I think he loved me more.’

  ‘I’m sure he did. Oh yes, Olga, I’ll come.’

  ‘Yes, but Kate, not just you. Bring people.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Lots of people. Oh, Kate, I’m not religious, but can any of us be absolutely sure that the dead don’t see? I couldn’t bear for this to be a fiasco. For this I have worked for years. For this I have slaved since my poor man breathed his last in Caceres.’ Olga had begun to cry. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Kate, I didn’t mean to cry, but I haven’t allowed myself time to grieve, you see. I have been angry instead. My Daniel was worth ten Daphne Stoneyhursts.’

  ‘Well, I agree. I expect she does too.’

  ‘I’ll ask her.’

  ‘Olga! You can’t do that.’

  ‘I can. I will. She’ll be there. And Stanley Wainwright.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘I know, but Tregarryn was very important to my Daniel. Very loved by him.’ Olga began to cry again.

  ‘Olga, please, you’ll have me crying in a minute.’

  ‘Good. And when it’s over, when the reputation of my Daniel is secure . . .’ Olga always referred to him as her Daniel, as if to distinguish him from all Daniels not owned by her. ‘ . . . we will eat together, and drink together, and remember together, and cry together.’

  ‘I can’t wait. Olga, I will invite people. Lots of people.’

  So Kate had. She’d invited Nigel and Timothy and Maurice and Elizabeth, with partners. She’d invited Oliver and Bunny, and Enid and Annie. She’d even invited Walter.

  When she’d invited Bernard she’d said, ‘Bring Rodber if you like.’ There’d been silence at the other end of the line. ‘What’s wrong, Bernard?’ she’d asked. ‘I don’t see Rodber any more,’ he’d said. ‘Cancer frightens him. He’s cut me out of his life as if I was a tumour.’