Practice Makes Perfect

by Rosemary Friedman

  She released me. “That’s what Bubbles said.”

  “Bubbles?”

  “Sure, Bubbles.”

  “You don’t mean…?” Horror dawned. Anything less like Bubbles than Faraday.

  “But why?”

  “It’s a long story…”

  I shuddered. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  “OK. Anyway, Bubbles decided when they gave him this Sabbatical that he couldn’t live without you one moment longer, and something about Mohamet and the mountain, so here we are. I said we should call, but Bubbles said no, surprise, surprise…”

  “He was always one for surprises.”

  “…so here we are and I am fixing a TV dinner that will have you doing handsprings in the backyard…”

  “There are three snags,” I said, as she went to the cooker.

  “Being?”

  “I have no idea what handsprings are, but I am convinced I cannot do them; the TV has gone into a decline, and we have no backyard.”

  “What’s that then?” She pointed to the rose-bushes. “I forgot. Garden; scans with pardon. I must brush up my English.”

  The house phone rang. It was Faraday.

  “Look, I thought I could cope but I seem to have lost my touch. There’s some weirdy here trying to push me out of my chair; I mean your chair.”

  Suspicion dawned. “He isn’t by any chance wearing a pea-green shirt?”

  “That’s right.”

  “With ochre trousers?”

  “I suppose you might call it that.”

  “That’s Fred.”

  “Fred?”

  “My partner.”

  “Are you sure?” Faraday said. “He isn’t wearing socks!”

  It was an evening to remember in more ways than one. First there was Caroline’s dinner; tomato juice with brewer’s yeast, Burnt Onion Soup, Golden Carrot Loaf with Green Pea Sauce and Yoghurt with Black Strap Molasses. The twins looked as if they were about to be sick, despite the fact that Sylvia made threatening faces at them and pointed out what a delicious meal Aunt Caroline had prepared; Fred kept waiting politely for the advent of the meat and I managed to feed my Green Pea Sauce to the “Busy Lizzie”. The only ones completely happy about the whole arrangement were Faraday and Caroline. They had finished the yoghurt and molasses, accompanied by a liberal sprinkling of wheat germ, down to the last scrap when they remembered Hank.

  “My God, I forgot,” Faraday said.

  “Me too,” Caroline said.

  “Who did you leave him with,” Sylvia said. “Your mother in Long Island?”

  Caroline and Faraday stared at each other.

  “I expect you’d like to telephone,” Sylvia said. “See that everything’s all right. I suppose the time’s different over there. Let me see, it’s five hours forward or is it back? Anyway, go right ahead,” she said magnanimously.

  “Honey,” Caroline said slowly. “Hank is upstairs. It won’t be necessary to call.”

  “Upstairs! You mean here? In our house upstairs?”

  “On your bed,” Caroline said, “taking a nap.”

  “I’ll go,” Faraday said, “he’ll be needing his daily vitality ritual.”

  I didn’t know which it was more difficult to imagine, Faraday as a father or Caroline as a mother. Both of them seemed the absolute antithesis of parenthood. It wasn’t hard to credit, however, that between them they had produced anything as delectable as Hank. He was a blond angel aged scarcely four and came down rubbing his large sleepy eyes, demanding TV and a dip in the pool.

  “They don’t have a pool, babyface,” Caroline said.

  One look at Hank’s astonished expression decided me to leave the explanation about the TV until after his daily vitality ritual, when he might be better equipped to withstand the shock.

  I thought that Hank at least would go overboard with his mother’s cooking. He just played with the Burnt Onion Soup.

  “Maybe he’s tired,” Sylvia said. “All that travelling.”

  “I’m always travelling.” Hank eyed her from beneath inch long lashes. “I can’t digest without TV”

  “I’m frightfully sorry,” I said. “The man promised to come today…”

  “Where have you travelled to?” Peter said curiously. “We’ve been to Paris, haven’t we, Daddy?”

  “California, Hong Kong, Miami Florida…”

  “Eat your soup,” Faraday said.

  “…Ceylon, Istanbul, Tokyo, Moscow…”

  Peter’s eyes grew wide.

  “They had TV in Hong Kong,” Hank said accusingly.

  “Well, this is England,” I said firmly, “and you happen to be half English…”

  “British,” Hank said. “Right, Mom?”

  “Right, babyface. Now eat your soup.”

  “I want to watch TV”

  “The TV has to be repaired,” I explained, as patiently as I could to this pint-sized four year old.

  “You mean it’s busted?”

  “Busted.”

  “I could go eat in the bedroom.”

  “They don’t have TV in the bedroom,” Caroline said. “You’ll just have to manage without.”

  “Tomorrow Daddy will buy you a TV,” I said, hastily eyeing Faraday. “Tell me, Hank, what do you do with yourself when you’re not watching TV or taking a dip in the pool?”

  He eyed me coolly over the soup.

  “Play violin,” he said.

  I gulped. “Pity we shan’t be able to hear you perform.”

  He fixed me with his steady gaze, reminiscent of his father.

  “No reason why not,” he said, “I have my violin upstairs.”

  “How old did you say he was?” I asked Caroline.

  “Four.” She gazed proudly at Hank, now resigned to dinner without TV.

  “Four years, three months, five days,” he said.

  “What about the hours?” I inquired.

  Hank looked at his watch. “Five and a half.”

  I gave up. “Faraday,” I said, “or should I say Bubbles, how about you and I going inside to catch up on lost time?”

  “Good idea. The girls can do the dishes. What about Fred?”

  “Fred doesn’t mind. He adores girls; and dishes.”

  “Man,” Fred said, “I am going to talk with Hank here about the prevailing state of chaos within the Pentagon.”

  “I’ll have my soup first, if that’s OK with you, Fred,” Hank said. “It’s getting kinda cold.”

  In the sitting-room I said: “Phew, that’s some boy you have there.”

  “Cute kid,” Faraday said, looking modestly at his nails.

  “Your brain, Caroline’s looks, it’s frightening. Caroline tells me you’re on a Sabbatical.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?”

  Faraday shrugged. He was looking out the window.

  “What are you doing, teaching or something while you’re here?”

  “There’s a possibility.”

  He was still looking out of the window. This wasn’t Faraday. No jokes, no quips. In the whole of our long acquaintanceship I could not remember him being serious.

  “Is something wrong? Your marriage, your job?”

  Faraday turned round and sat on the window ledge.

  “I’ve got Hodgkin’s disease,” he said.

  Nine

  In books they talked about pins dropping, clocks ticking. There were no pins and no clocks but I swear I could hear the beating of my own heart. I searched everywhere for phrases but rejected each one before it was uttered. Fortunately Faraday spoke.

  “Before you start straw-clutching I’ll put you in the picture,” he said. “The onset was fairly typical; feeling lousy, weight loss, enlarged glands in the usual places…”

  “I presume you took no notice for quite a while?”

  “I thought I was just run down. Kept shouting at the students, getting irritable with Caroline. When I started getti
ng fevers and sweating on the top line I went to see a pal of mine. You won’t believe this; it was an absolutely straightforward clinical picture yet I hadn’t a clue what was the matter with me. You could have knocked me down with a feather.”

  “What treatment have you had?”

  He shrugged. “Radiotherapy; two courses.”

  “You could go on for years,” I said.

  “The initial nodal swellings were visceral.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I could not go on for years. I doubt in fact if I can go on for months. I have been to see Nicholls today, Caroline thinks I’ve been looking for houses, and he agreed.”

  Nicholls was our old chief at the hospital where we had been students together.

  “Had he anything to suggest?”

  Faraday looked at me quizzically. “Just was kind enough to say that he’d look after me and not to hesitate to consult him whenever I felt the need.”

  “Caroline said you were on a Sabbatical.”

  “Caroline doesn’t know. There’ll be time for that. I suddenly had a mad urge to come home. There’s nothing here by way of treatment, of course, that we don’t have in the States but I just thought I’d be happier…here..”

  I guessed he meant with me around and was glad he didn’t feel the need to apologise. Our friendship was too old, too firm and too close for that.

  “How do you feel now?” I said.

  “OK. I have to. I’m working on a text-book of neurology. I have to finish it. I insist upon finishing it.”

  It was typical Faraday.

  “How long will it take you?”

  “No matter how long it takes,” he said, ‘I personally shall write ‘Fin’ on the last page.”

  Knowing Faraday I guessed he would, prognosis or no prognosis. I thought of Hank and Caroline and the perfection of all three of them. I was used to death but not in my own, my closest friends. I felt full of impotent rage.

  “There can be no mistake, I suppose?”

  Faraday ignored the stupid question. “You’ll get over the shock,” he said. “I have.”

  I looked at him.

  “Scout’s honour. I can’t honestly say I’m bowled over with joy at the prospect of chucking the whole thing in ‘in the midst of my days’ as they say, but it doesn’t bother me much any more. Only for Hank…and Caroline… You’ll have to help me.”

  I looked up, glad to be given something to do.

  “Act normally, I mean. Caroline is aware that I’m not a hundred per cent fit but there’s no need for her to know any more just now.”

  He was asking a lot.

  “I found a house; in Chelsea. Tarted up workman’s cottage for which they want a diabolical rent. Chi-chi and not uncomfortable; there’s a piano for Hank. Caroline will like it.”

  “He plays the piano too?”

  “He has an IQ of 170.”

  He started telling me about Hank and his various achievements. I listened with half my mind and with the other tried to take in what he had told me. I had seen people numbed by shock, unable to assimilate things unpleasant. Now I was experiencing it at first hand. Through a mist, finally, I heard Faraday say:

  “Now tell me what’s been happening to you.”

  I told him of my interest in psychiatry, that we were moving, that Sylvia’s book was due shortly to be published, about Lulu, about Fred.

  “Never a dull moment,” Faraday said, “just like old times.”

  “Just like old times,” I echoed and knew that without Faraday, even though he had been away for so long, the old times would never be quite the same again.

  Faraday had booked in at some sleazy hotel which was all he had been able to find with London so full of Summer visitors. Sylvia wouldn’t hear of them going, so we changed round beds and got out the children’s sleeping bags, much to their delight, and sorted ourselves for the night and as many nights as they wanted until their heavy baggage arrived and they were able to transfer to the chi-chi house in Chelsea.

  It was after midnight before we all settled down, chiefly because Hank was wide awake after his long nap and insisted on playing chess with Fred until he finally had to be hauled off bodily to bed by his father.

  When Sylvia and I eventually got into bed and were prepared to drop off we heard curious noises on the landing.

  I sat up. “What the hell’s that? The kids, I suppose, still larking about. I shall have to deal with Peter, it’s almost one o’clock and he should know better. Enough’s enough…”

  Sylvia pushed me back on the pillow. “It’s not the kids.”

  “What is it then?”

  “Cousin Caroline. Don’t you remember?”

  Remember I did. It was Caroline, hurling the dust-laden pillows, eiderdowns and God knows what else out of the bedroom in case they affected one of her numerous allergies.

  “As long as she doesn’t hurl Faraday too,” I said. Then I realised it was no longer very funny.

  “Terrible, isn’t it?” Sylvia said, putting her head on my shoulder.

  “What is?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know: about Faraday.”

  “I know but how on earth do you know?”

  “Caroline told me.”

  “But Caroline doesn’t know.”

  “Caroline knows all right but Faraday doesn’t know she knows.”

  This was getting complicated.

  “She had her suspicions and they told her at the hospital in New Jersey. She knows that Faraday doesn’t want her to know so she has to pretend that she doesn’t. It makes it easier for him.”

  “My God, you’d never think…”

  “Caroline always was tough. Remember the fire?”

  My mind slid back and I recalled the fire at the twins’ school when Caroline had been staying with us many years ago. She had rescued several children from the burning building, lost all her hair in the process, and had come home without saying a word to us.

  “Women are funny,” I said. “Much tougher than men.”

  “They have to be. They’ve always had to be.”

  She was right as usual. I didn’t argue.

  “Will he be in pain?” Sylvia said.

  “It won’t be pleasant, but not actual pain. There are drugs.”

  “That darling, darling Hank…”

  “Stop crying,” I said, “we shall have to face this thing and try hard not to be sad.”

  We went to sleep and in the morning there was no time to be. We were woken at five-thirty by Eugénie screaming, the twins playing Red Indians in their sleeping bags and Hank practising the violin. Faraday and Caroline, no doubt exhausted by their journey, slept blissfully on. We fed Eugénie, walloped the twins, but nothing we did or said could stop Hank. We buried our heads under the bedclothes in an abortive attempt to stifle the horrid sounds of the murder of Bach until it was time to get up, but ten minutes later we were woken once more, this time by the telephone.

  “If that’s Barbara Basildon,” Sylvia said, “I’ll do my nut.”

  She answered the telephone crossly. “It’s Barbara Basildon,” she said, with her hand over the mouthpiece and glaring at me, “the baby has a stuffy nose and will you leave a prescription for nose-drops so that her husband can collect it on the way to work.”

  “Ask her if he works a night shift.”

  “Mrs Basildon,” I heard her say before I dozed off again, “do you know what time it is?”

  Barbara Basildon was Sylvia’s bête noire. She was a harmless sort of girl really, just not terribly bright, but she got under Sylvia’s skin. She was the type of patient who was quite incapable of using either commonsense or judgement, and picked up the telephone the instant she discovered one of her family to be ailing, no matter what time of the day or night it happened to be. I hated to think of the number of occasions on which she had woken Sylvia from a peaceful sleep.

  “Barbara Basildon!” she would shriek, brought back violently from Venice or the Greek Isles or wherever
her dreams had taken her. Barbara Basildon it usually was. I had told her about it firmly, had a talk with her equally ineffectual husband, threatened to remove her family from our list. Barbara Basildon had wept. She was unable to rear her infants without my assistance; could have confidence in no doctor other than myself; promised faithfully to telephone at the proper times. Perhaps she really did try. All I knew was that no single patient interrupted more meals, more well-earned sits, more precious hours of sleep than she. In our house, Barbara Basildon was a naughty word. After her, even Bach, as executed by the persevering Hank, seemed soothing.

  Herbert Basildon arrived while we were having breakfast, if you could call it that. It sounded simple but in actual fact it was a sort of madhouse in our fortunately outsize kitchen. Sylvia was attempting with one hand to fry eggs and bacon for myself and the twins, and with the other to shovel Farex into a protesting Eugénie; Caroline was busy squeezing the last of our half dozen oranges while holding forth about the benefits of unsweetened, natural fruit juice, giving disparaging glances the whilst at our frying pan; Faraday and Hank were doing their two hundred prescribed jog-trots beside the cooker as it was pelting with rain outside; Fred had appeared with a large garlic sausage, and Lulu was making coffee for all, to the accompaniment of her transistor radio, as her husband had been away for the night and she hated to eat breakfast alone and in silence.

  “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Fred said, peeling his sausage, “any more for any more?”

  “You aren’t going to eat that raw? Hundred and five, hundred and six…”

  “Clear the waiting-room in a jiffy.”

  “It’s no good yelling then spitting it out,” Sylvia said to Eugénie, as if she could understand. “You try, Penny; no, wrap the napkin round her, she’s just had a clean nightie. Put Napoleon there, Peter, on the table. You know she likes to see him. Hank, darling, that’s Eugénie’s Panda. Yes, I do know why he’s called Napoleon, but the bacon’s burning, just put him back, there’s a good boy. P’raps it is a bit hot for her, blow on it… What was that about hygiene, Caroline? Look, you look after your child and let me look after mine.”