The Boarding-House

by William Trevor

  In her sleep Nurse Clock snored, though only slightly. She woke herself and turned on her side. Below her Studdy snored loudly and did not wake; and across the landing from Studdy Miss Clerricot dreamed of another lunch with Mr Sellwood. ‘Married?’ Mr Sellwood was crying out, beaming with a smile. ‘Who said I was married, my dear?’ He spoke of banks again. Barclay’s and Lloyd’s and the National Provincial, and beneath the table his foot, by accident, lay lightly on the foot of Miss Clerricot dreaming.

  Mr Obd had dropped into a light sleep from which every hour he recovered and rose to add a piece to his letter. Venables dreamed that the Queen had asked him to take Prince Charles to a cinema matinee. It was a pleasant dream, for usually he dreamed about the Flatrups, the mother and the father and the skinny body of the daughter which, twenty years ago now, he had been offered and had taken. The Flatrups led some scattered life, wandering from hotel to hotel where they were employed as a trio of kitchen staff. Old Mr Flatrup had written to Venables from many addresses, demanding fifty pounds for Miss Flatrup’s abortion. In his dreams they descended on him with sharp instruments, shouting at him, swearing and blaspheming.

  Rose Cave dreamed on about her mother. ‘Your dad was a Mr Bird,’ said her mother. ‘That Mr Bird who died, whose funeral you went to, my dear, to whose wreaths you contributed two shillings. Didn’t I ever tell you, he came to paper an upstairs room and laid me down instead?’

  Major Eele felt the linoleum cold beneath his feet and padded across it, forgetting about his slippers, to make the journey to the lavatory. He flushed it loudly and on the way back banged with force on Mr Scribbin’s door. The roar of the doubled-chimneyed Lord Faringdon ceased abruptly, bringing to a halt an evening express en route from Peterborough North to King’s Cross.

  At three o’clock that morning Mr Obd, rising for the fifth time to add more to his letter, imagined he heard a sound and cocked his ear to catch it better. He thought he heard the dragging noise that Mr Bird used in his lifetime to make with his deformed foot: a soft noise it was, as the foot moved from step to step on the stairs. He listened again and imagined he heard it anew, and thought, as well, that he heard a kind of laugh, a suppressed thing, like the guilty snigger of a child in a classroom. Then he shook his head and went about his task, for he knew full well that Mr Bird, foot and all, was dead and buried and could hardly be dragging his way about the house or sniggering peculiarly in the middle of the night.

  7

  ‘Well,’ said Nurse Clock, ‘arrangements must be made, you know.’

  If I had a pin, thought Studdy, I would sink it into your knee. He thought rhetorically: he knew that the pin was still in the point of his left lapel.

  ‘So much to do,’ went on Nurse Clock. ‘What do you think, then?’

  Studdy could feel his feet moving in his shoes. He located a hole in one of his socks and made a note to cut his toenails later that day. He said: ‘I do not know what to think.’

  Nurse Clock was conscious of a short spasm of irritation. She smiled agreeably. ‘We need to have a chat,’ she said. ‘So much to discuss.’

  Studdy did not reply. Nurse Clock had caught him on the way out. He was anxious to be on the move, to take up his stance opposite Mrs Maylam’s flat and await the arrival of Mrs Rush.

  ‘To tell the truth, I’m in a desperate hurry, missus.’ Studdy spoke cheekily, knowing she wouldn’t care to be addressed in this way. Realizing all that, she smiled again.

  ‘We had better make an appointment in that case,’ she said. ‘We can’t let the residents down, you know. A house like this takes running.’

  ‘What?’asked Studdy.

  ‘We must pull together, Mr Studdy, and sink our past differences. What do you say to that? Mr Bird made us into a team.’

  Studdy winced. Deliberately obtuse, he said: ‘Mr Bird is dead.’

  ‘Indeed he is. And buried too. “You have nursed me sweetly,” he remarked, and set out to join his Maker. I say “set out”, for he paused en route to call back. “Lay your cool hand on my forehead,” said Mr Bird in a failing voice; and off he went, carrying the mark of my palm to the kingdom beyond. It was the most touching moment in my life, Mr Studdy, though I have seen the hand of death stretched out a thousand times.’

  ‘I am sure you have, missus.’

  ‘Mr Studdy, I wish you not to call me missus. I am not married, as you full well know, nor ever have been.’

  ‘Pardon, Nurse Clock. I thought you had married a man in the nineteen-thirties.’ Studdy watched her face. He was given to saying most things that came into his mind to see if they caused a reaction. ‘I thought I heard that said in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘You never heard that said in the neighbourhood. You know that well.’

  ‘A case of mistaken identity in that case. I am thinking of some other nurse.’

  ‘You are forgiven, Mr Studdy.’ She spoke merrily, playing a cheerful part, baring her teeth again. ‘“See they wash my body,” said Mr Bird, “and shave my poor old cheeks. It is terrible to see a dirty man in a coffin.” Well, of course I had his wishes met with. Naturally I am more used than most to last-minute requests. You know old Bishop Hode has passed along?’

  ‘Outside? Gone walking, do you mean?’

  ‘Mr Studdy, you’re a scream! We’re going to get on like a house on fire, you and I. Bishop Hode gave up the ghost at eleven o’clock last night. I was called out for the occasion.’

  ‘I never knew the Bishop.’

  ‘Nor ever will! When they’re beyond their ninetieth year there’s not much point to anything. Bishop Hode used to spend the major part of his day in the airing cupboard.’

  Studdy knew that. He knew that old Bishop Hode, who had lived alone with only a charwoman to tend him, had developed in later life the odd habit of locking himself up in his airing cupboard. It was something that had interested Studdy very much; he had often thought of writing to him.

  ‘I heard tell of the Bishop. I heard tell a funny thing or two.’

  ‘Funny?’

  Studdy wagged his head, indicating that what he had heard was extraordinary, even sinister. ‘The rumour had it that the old lad climbed into the cupboard to escape the woman who came with a syringe for his legs.’

  He examined her face closely. He imagined he could detect a flush. Have I caught her on a raw spot? he wondered; and pen and paper immediately took form in his mind.

  ‘The Bishop had to have his injections,’ said Nurse Clock. ‘He was under the doctor, with the strictest instructions about leg injections. He’d be alive now – oh, Mr Studdy, I’d been meaning to have a word with you: I understand you gave Mrs Maylam a potato.’

  ‘I often do a message for the old lady.’

  ‘You gave her a potato to wear on a string round her waist. As some kind of protection against rheumatism.’

  ‘God, is that the time? Well, cheerio now, missus–’

  ‘Mr Studdy, I asked you a question.’

  ‘Sure, what harm does it do the old soul? What harm could a simple spud–’

  ‘I have my duty, Mr Studdy. You are leading the old woman on with superstitious nonsense. It is a matter I intend to take up with Doctor.’

  Studdy said nothing. He buttoned the bottom button of his overcoat and passed a hand over his face, feeling its features with thumb and forefinger.

  ‘I shall be seeing Doctor this very morning.’

  Studdy held his nose by the tip and drew his breath hard through his nostrils. This was quite noisy. Nurse Clock shivered; she had seen and heard him up to that kind of thing before.

  ‘I shall be seeing him,’ she repeated, ‘and I feel it my bounden duty to pass on the information–’

  ‘Doctor’s a great fellow,’ said Studdy, wagging his head in admiration. He did not know which doctor she was referring to, and he knew that she knew he did not know, and he knew that his casual reference to an anonymous medical man would irritate her beyond measure.

  ‘He will not stand for i
nterference with his patients,’ Nurse Clock warned sharply. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that he will have that potato in the dustbin in a trice. Mrs Maylam could lose her life with this kind of carry-on. If she’s to continue to be mobile she must take those injections. You know that, Mr Studdy.’

  ‘Sure, the poor soul–’

  ‘She was smoking a cigarette the other day. I’m to understand you gave her that too. D’you want to slaughter her?’

  ‘You’re very hard on that old lady. Sure, what harm does a gasper do her? The woman’s in pain, Nurse.’

  ‘That is the precise point. Cigarettes and potatoes will hardly cure the pain, now will they? Whereas medical attention–’

  ‘Mrs Maylam doesn’t eat the potato, you know. Did you think she ate the raw potato? It’s threaded on to a string and must be kept against the flesh. A very well known cure for rheumatics. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard of it.’

  ‘There’s not much you don’t hear of in my profession, Mr Studdy. Potatoes on string, badger’s oil, rhubarb – there’s not a quack cure I haven’t heard of.’

  Nurse Clock talked on, about the cures that people performed or failed to perform on themselves and on others, and Studdy did not listen. He was aware of the woman less than two feet away from him, her voice droning, rising and falling to denote amazement and incredulity at the folly of her fellows. He could have reached out now and sunk the pin into the thick fat of her knee where it glowed palely within the black stocking. He could have caressed the knee and taken even greater liberties. It seemed to Studdy that whichever action he might choose to perform in terms of the nurse’s knee she would not in this particular moment notice it. And as she talked on he too became engrossed in his own way. They sat opposite one another in the television lounge, two presences sharply opposed and yet for the moment oblivious of that opposition, oblivious of almost everything except what separately occupied their minds. Nurse Clock spoke of an onion cure for deafness and of an old man who had poured this boiling broth into his wife’s ears and had later come up for manslaughter. Studdy thought about what Major Eele had said the night before concerning Miss Clerricot and her reactions to Mrs le Tor. He had observed Miss Clerricot that morning at breakfast and he thought he had detected a certain uneasiness in her manner. He thought she had seemed on edge, moving about on her chair rather a lot. As she rose to go she had upset something and had not noticed. If it hadn’t been for his prior engagement with Mrs Rush, he would have followed Miss Clerricot to her place of work and kept an eye on her movements at lunchtime and at five-thirty. Studdy sighed. It was all very difficult: sometimes it seemed to him that none of it was worth it, writing endless letters, tramping along the streets and hanging about in doorways. Only once in a lifetime did one really do well, like the time a man in South Wimbledon had given him a present of sixteen pounds. But that was that, and Studdy knew better than to tap the same source again: people got hysterical when you went too far. He had even heard of people who had gone to the police.

  ‘I knew a man who ate tar,’ Nurse Clock was saying, and something that she had said a moment ago sprang to life in Studdy’s ear. ‘There’s not much you don’t hear of in my profession, Mr Studdy.’ Studdy leaned back, his fingers probing at the orifices on his face, touching his teeth and gums, moving up towards the nostrils. He thought: Nurses get into people’s houses. Nurses sit at bedsides and hear things said in delirium. Nurses make tea in the kitchens of the crippled and the elderly. They poke about in drawers and in tin boxes full of string and letters. Nurses are often confidantes; they hear family secrets; they bend their ears low for the final words of dying men and dying women. They are in at childbirth if they wish to be. They hear a mother’s guilt as she moans in labour, and between the bouts they collect a little meat, a fact or two of interest. Nurses attend to people in a weakened condition. Nurses can sell little services, can stop clocks and weather glasses and offer to have them speedily repaired. Nurses can say that new sponges are essential in the bathroom, that a little electric fire would cheer a bedroom. Nurses can tot up a bill for such errands at the end of a long month and hand it sweetly over, deploring the rise in prices. Studdy raised his eyes to Nurse Clock’s face. Teeth were showing, an eye winked to emphasize a point. Nurse Clock was talking to the air, chatting away about cases she had known.

  He could see her doing it well, handing out a bill and gossiping on, her gaze fixed on a corner of the room, a smile deployed over the lower area of her face. Excitement seized Studdy. He felt a breath of heat form on the back of his neck and then increase, spreading into his scalp. He felt warmth in his stomach, and then a trembling there. There was sweat on the palms of his hands.

  ‘By dad, Nurse, you’ve convinced me,’ he said. ‘Will I tell you where I’m going to this instant minute?’

  Nurse Clock, considerably surprised by this volte-face on the part of her partner and adversary, requested that she might be told.

  ‘I’m going down to Mrs Maylam’s to release her of that potato. D’you know what it is, she might lie on that thing in her sleep and do herself no good at all.’

  Studdy departed, and Nurse Clock sat alone for a moment. Mr Bird’s will had been far from precise. Over a period, she imagined, it would not be difficult to pick a hole or two in it. It would be nice to bundle Studdy off somewhere and eventually to turn the place into a chic home for the aged.

  8

  Studdy stood in a doorway waiting for the grey Morris Minor of Mrs Rush. He passed the time with a matchstick, breaking it in half, breaking the two pieces again, mashing it up in his fingers until it was a mass of grey shreds.

  Studdy took a second match from his box. It was not of the sort called safety matches: it was short, with a pink tip that could be struck on any material that would create friction with it. ‘The smoker’s match,’ said Studdy to himself, quoting words he had seen on the side of a bus. He wondered what it meant, saying a match was a smoker’s match. He wondered if it was supposed to light cigarettes better.

  Studdy inserted the match into his mouth, holding it by its pink tip. He began on the lower jaw, working from tooth to tooth, clearing out lodged food from gaps and crevices. His roving tongue picked up the particles.

  As he was lifting a fresh match from the box he observed Nurse Clock approaching slowly on her bicycle. He swore quietly: he guessed she was coming to visit Mrs Maylam. Hastily he turned up his coat collar and lifted a hand to shield his face, pretending he was lighting a cigarette. He watched her out of the corner of his right eye. She brought her bicycle to a halt, propped it against the curb, looked around her, noticed him immediately and waved cheerily. Studdy did not respond. For a moment he thought that this was perhaps a mistake, that she would now be doubtful as to the identity of the crouching man and might cross the road to sort matters out. Fortunately, she did not seem interested. She unstrapped her black nurse’s bag from the carrier of her bicycle and without further ado entered the large red-brick building that contained Mrs Maylam’s two rooms. A moment later Mrs Rush’s grey Morris Minor drew up, neatly hemming in Nurse Clock’s bicycle.

  ‘It is my bounden duty,’ said Nurse Clock, a smile radiant upon her face, her small fingers busy within her nurse’s bag.

  The floor creaked as she crossed it, and the noise caused Mrs Maylam to shift her gaze from the nurse’s face to the black stockinged calves that traversed her worn carpet and were attached to the instruments of the disturbance. ‘It is my bounden duty,’ repeated Nurse Clock ‘to see that you achieve the goal that He has set you. Remember, dear, it is His life. Not yours, nor mine; ours but to rent, ours but to borrow–’

  Mrs Maylam emitted a cry, and accused the nurse of being mentally deficient. But Nurse Clock only laughed, implying a kindly scorn thrown upon the old woman’s words.

  Mrs Maylam laughed too, joining her laughter to Nurse Clock’s; then, ceasing it with abruptness, she snapped:

  ‘I am up to your tricks.’

  ‘Tricks, dear?’


  ‘Remember old Mrs Fishon?’

  ‘Yes, dear, I remember Mrs Fishon.’

  ‘She died intact at one-oh-one.’

  ‘She died in her sleep, Mrs Maylam. A peaceful death. ’Twas better that way. Her mind, you know.’

  ‘Her mind was as sound as yours. You could not break her spirit.’

  ‘Now, death is worrying you, Mrs Maylam. You have lost your family and we must see that all that does not cause you fret. Try to be cheerful, my dear.’

  Mrs Maylam was silent for a moment and then broke into swearing. Finally she said:

  ‘Take that morbid nurse’s chatter elsewhere. Frig off. Nurse Clock.’