Practice Makes Perfect

by Rosemary Friedman

  “It’ll do you for a good six months,” I said. “After that we shall have to see.”

  Sylvia was delighted when I met her in the book department of Garrods and told her the news. She was not so delighted when I asked the assistant for her book. Filled with embarrassment about what she fondly believed to be her public image, she refused to ask for it herself. When we had combed the “new fiction” counter without success, she insisted that I did the inquiring while she stood some discreet distance away, as if she didn’t belong to me.

  The assistant was most helpful. No, she didn’t have it in stock. No, she wasn’t aware that it had been published that day. Yes they always had the new books ready for sale on publication day. Did I know who the author was? I felt Sylvia look daggers. Would I like her to look it up in the catalogue of new books? Would I like her to order a copy specially, it would take about three weeks, that was if she could find it in the catalogue…? Yes, she did know her job, had been a book buyer for thirty years…was I sure I wouldn’t like her to look it up, to order a copy…?

  We fared no better elsewhere. Poor Sylvia. She had pictured her work overflowing the fiction stands in every store, imagined herself besieged by customers for autographs. Some assistants were as helpful as the first, others just looked blank. One or two offered alternative light reading by established writers, and one, putting the seal on Sylvia’s ignominy, suggested helpfully we must have been mistaken both in the title of the book and the name of the author. “There’s so many new books comin’ out it’s ever so easy to get muddled!”

  Finally I called a halt and insisted we had lunch or I should be late for the hospital.

  “Just one more,” Sylvia pleaded. “In the arcade. I’m absolutely sure they’ll have it there.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I just have that feeling.”

  “You’re always having feelings.”

  “Please, Sweetie!”

  This time she did not even bother to hide, but stood by my side as I asked for what must have been the ninetieth time for her book.

  A bright young man plucked it from a shelf. We stood atrophied with shock.

  “Came in today, sir,” he said brightly.

  “Is something wrong?” Not so brightly.

  “Oh, no. No. Nothing at all.”

  “Open it then,” Sylvia hissed. “Pretend you’re looking at it.”

  “But I’ve looked at it; for months.”

  “I know, but you’ve got to pretend.”

  I flipped through the pages.

  “Will it be cash or cheque, sir?” The bright young man inquired.

  I looked at Sylvia in horror. “He expects me to buy it! We’ve got dozens of them at home.”

  “Tell him you don’t want it.”

  “But why? I did ask for it. He’ll want to know a reason.”

  Sylvia thought. “It’s too thick…”

  “Too thick,” I said.

  “Or too thin…”

  “Too thin.”

  “Too light…”

  “Too light.”

  “For a journey?” the young man said.

  “No, not for a journey.”

  “Someone in hospital?”

  “No, no one in hospital. Do you have it in French?” I asked on a brainwave.

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  I handed him the book back. “Well, thanks awfully. I’m sure it’s frightfully interesting but actually I only read French.”

  His brightness faded ever so slightly and he watched me from the corner of his eye as he put the book back in the shelf.

  I whipped it out again and put it face up on the “new fiction” counter.

  “I should leave it there, young man,” I said, authoritatively. “Someone might want to buy it!”

  I was late for the hospital after all.

  To my amazement, Jean and Daphne were bobbing about like a pair of cats on hot bricks waiting for me.

  “You’re late!”

  “We thought you weren’t coming.”

  “I’m often late and I sometimes don’t come. Where’s the fire?” I grinned.

  “Toby’s not here. He’s had his prostate out. You’ll have to cope on your own.”

  I stopped grinning.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Cancel the clinic.”

  “We can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Tommy says you’re to do it.”

  “Tommy? You know quite well the Professor doesn’t know I exist.”

  Jean gave me a push. “Oh, do get on with it, darling, I want to leave at six!”

  Propelled by them both I sat petrified in Toby’s cell. Sitting by his side Tuesday after Tuesday pretending I knew something about psychiatry was one thing. Seeing the patients on my own was another. I looked at the window and was wondering whether it was large enough to climb through when Daphne said: “Your patient, Doctor,” and ushered in an enormous Arab in flowing robes.

  I opened the folder Daphne had put on my desk, hoping to find full details in Toby’s immaculate handwriting of this Eastern gentleman’s case. To my horror there was nothing but a blank sheet of hospital notepaper, with the solitary words “new patient”. I looked up to find him glaring at me darkly and reassured myself that perhaps after all it was better that this should be a new patient. I could at least spend the session taking the history, a task of which even I felt capable, and perhaps by his next appointment Toby might have returned. Clearing my throat and removing the cap from my fountain pen, I set out to ascertain from my patient the circumstances of his birth, early life and development, physical and emotional growth and maturity through schooldays, adolescence and subsequent career. I was helped by the fact that the patient spoke perfect English and got on famously until I asked him how many brothers and sisters he had.

  “Brothers and sisters?” He looked puzzled.

  “Yes, you know…brothers…and sisters.”

  He appeared to be thinking.

  “Yes?” I prompted him.

  He shrugged an enormous shrug and looked at the ceiling.

  “You have got brothers and sisters?”

  He nodded furiously.

  “Well, how many?” My pen poised.

  He shrugged again. “Seventy, eighty; maybe less, maybe more.”

  “Brothers and sisters?”

  “Brothers and sisters.”

  It occurred to me suddenly that being a Moslem his father must have had many wives and I was not surprised that the question had given him trouble.

  I completed the history within the framework and under the headings I had been so ably instructed upon by Toby, and inquired the nature of the patient’s problem.

  “I cannot make love.”

  I wrote down “impotence” then said:

  “Hang on a minute. You told me your wife was in the Middle East and that you haven’t seen her for six months.”

  He pulled his chair a little closer to my desk and leaned forward until his face was close to mine. I wondered what on earth he was up to.

  “Doctor,” he said confidentially. “In my country we have a saying. ‘If you have a car it is advisable to carry a spare wheel!’”

  It took a moment for the penny to drop.

  “Oh, quite,” I said. “Very sensible. Quite.”

  I was relieved to find that my next patient was our old friend Mrs Nuttall, whom we were gradually helping to cope with her agoraphobia. Before working with Toby I had thought of agoraphobia as some sort of trivial complaint, often the subject of jokes. I had discovered over my weeks at St Mark’s however, that it was a common and often extremely distressing illness, affecting not only the lives of sufferers but of their families as well. Men and women in many cases had been unable to work for years. Married housewives were prevented from leading a normal life because of fears of public transport, walking, waiting for buses, crossing roads, and were completely confined to their homes. Mrs Nuttall had been one of those unable to leave hers
. When first she had come to Toby’s clinic she had dared no further than her garden gate, now she managed to go as far as the local shops and was actually contemplating a holiday, something she had not had since the onset of her illness twenty years previously. She came in smiling.

  “I went to Selfridges and bought a birthday card,” she said.

  To the uninitiated it might not seem an achievement worthy of comment.

  Daphne came in and announced that it was six o’clock and I had seen the last patient; I was unable to believe that time had gone so fast and that I had managed the patients on my own.

  I walked down the corridor like a dog with two tails until I encountered the Professor going in the opposite direction. He looked right through me and the smile faded from my face. A moment later there was a tug at my coat.

  “Oh, er, Toby thinks a great deal of you,” the Professor said. “Thanks for getting on with the job.”

  I looked after him. Had he actually addressed a remark to me or had I imagined it? I touched the hallowed hem of my coat and reckoned it marked the beginnings of my acceptance in the Department of Psychological Medicine at Mark’s.

  “It’s a double celebration,” Caroline said, as she opened the door to us for Sylvia’s publication party. “Come on in, honeys; Bubbles has finished his book!”

  I felt a sense of relief and realised how anxious I had been about Faraday’s capacity to survive long enough to see his wish materialise. Over the past weeks his bouts of fever and pain had become more and more frequent and it had been pathetic to watch him, now almost nothing but skin and bone, working like one possessed, more often than not in bed, with Sylvia’s typewriter on his chest.

  The little chi-chi house was bursting its seams with large chi-chi people, none of whom I had seen before. Caroline, looking fabulous in a scarlet chiffon dress with shoe-string shoulder straps and matching scarlet satin shoes, elbowed us in.

  “This is Katya and Martha and Ilana and Petrushka and Hasan and Chan, Chan works with Bubbles, and Fleur and Betty and Donald over there, behind the beer, and listen everyone…” She clapped her hands. “…this is Sylvia (isn’t she gorgeous?) and she’s just written the most fabulous best-seller…”

  We exchanged glances, still licking our bookshop wounds.

  “…and you all absolutely promise me faithfully to buy a copy or you won’t get even one more teeny-weeny drink and Sylvia will autograph it for you and she’s going to be terribly famous and broadcast and lecture and appear on TV and absolutely…”

  “Caroline!” I said warningly, since she appeared to be getting carried away.

  “…well, you are aren’t you, honey?” she said to Sylvia, who was trying to look modest but enjoying every moment. “Anyway, come and say hallo to all my beautiful friends!”

  Ignoring me, she led Sylvia into the midst of the colourful throng and the last I saw of her was gazing into the eyes of a handsome man with a ginger beard, a white polo-necked sweater and a jewelled pendant, looking like Henry the Eighth in his young days, and being asked how many words a day she wrote and longhand or on the typewriter, and how long it took her and did she work the plot out first or just start writing…

  “Where’s Faraday?” I said to Caroline, but she didn’t hear and disappeared in a flash of smooth white bosom and scarlet chiffon.

  “In the basement,” a voice said from my knees and there was Hank, blond hair over his forehead and a bottle of champagne under each arm. “Pop’s finished his book,” he said proudly.

  “I know.”

  “He’s going to be real famous.”

  “I know.”

  “C’mon down. I’ll show you. I’m in charge of liquor.”

  I followed him down the narrow, winding staircase, meeting up halfway with an enormous sun bronzed lady swathed to her ankles in gorgeous Tahitian print of violet, orange and purple.

  “Felicity!” she announced, attempting to squeeze her vast bulk against the wall to allow me to pass. “Jamaica. I’ve just come back. You’ll die of suffocation. I’ve just come up for air.”

  She was almost right. Downstairs the heat was intense and you could barely see for smoke.

  There was a long table with cheeses and a ham and a huge bowl of mussels and tall glasses of celery and pumpernikel and boxes of crackers and radish flowers and onion dip and paper napkins, all getting a bit out of hand, as people dipped and spread and stretched and dropped everything over themselves or everyone else.

  At the far end, behind another table, beneath which were cardboard boxes full of bottles, Faraday was dispensing drinks. I edged my way towards him. Although I had seen him frequently, I was horrified to see how emaciated he now appeared. There was a half-inch gap between his collar and his neck and he was sweating profusely.

  “Ah, Professor!” he said when he saw me, picking up a glass, “what about a drop of Château Tite Street, nineteen-o-four? A plucky little vintage if ever there was one.” He handed me a glass of Bordeaux plonk.

  “You should be in bed,” I hissed, taking the glass.

  “I know.”

  “You’re crazy standing down here in all this heat.”

  A blonde in a silver cat-suit crept up behind him and enveloped him in her arms. “He’s finished his book. Not that anyone can understand a word but isn’t he simply magnifico?”

  I was pushed from my place as more hordes swept in for drinks. I made my way to the eats table and started dipping and spreading with the rest. I talked to men and was ogled by girls and wondered where they found all these people who appeared to have just arrived from various corners of the globe or to be just off to various others, to lecture or to act or to lounge or to laze or to be with “Daddy” or to follow the sun or a variety of reasons of which I wished I just had one.

  When I had caught up, food and drink-wise, I went upstairs to find air and Sylvia. She was sitting on the piano holding court and looking fabulous. I left her alone; this was her evening and I did not want to intrude.

  I edged my way out into the hall again and sat halfway up the stairs with a tall shandy. A not very sober redhead came and sat on my lap. Unasked she proceeded to tell me her life story, which included two or three husbands, she didn’t seem quite certain, a similar number of film parts, and that she came from Los Angeles. She was in the middle of propositioning me because she thought I had nice ears, when Faraday appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

  He looked like a ghost, damp and grey. He passed us slowly one step at a time.

  “Want me to come?” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to lie me down to die.”

  The redhead laughed. Her teeth were very white. “Isn’t he just cute?” she said.

  Twenty-one

  Death, being no respecter of time nor person, chose the Monday morning of Fred’s court case to visit Faraday. Despite the fact that my oldest and closest friend had travelled more than three thousand miles in order to be near me, I wasn’t with him when he died.

  I had guessed it was going to be a busy morning with a packed surgery and long list of visits to cope with on my own, and had consequently made an early start.

  I was just backing the car out of the garage, catching the bumper on the door as I did so, when Sylvia stuck her head out of the window and said: “Wait” and Peter came rushing down to say Maureen Clarke was having severe pains in her back and tummy and could I go immediately. I disentangled the bumper when Penny rushed out to say that Mr Tolley was having a very bad turn and it was very urgent and Mummy was in the bath but Cousin Caroline was crying on the telephone and could I go straight away to see Faraday.

  I sat for a moment tossing up between Maureen Clarke, seven months pregnant, toxaemic and possibly in premature labour, Grandpa Tolley very likely in heart failure, my best friend in desperate need of me and a surgery full of waiting patients. Diana Pilkington, who always chose her moments, selected that agonising one to open the car d
oor and lay Cecil’s sandwiches silently on the seat. It had become a twice weekly routine as he seemed incapable of remembering them on more than three days out of five.

  I wanted more than anything to go to Faraday. Nothing else mattered. I cursed Fred for having to be in court just at that moment, the patients for having prior claim to my attention. It boiled down to Grandpa Tolley and Maureen Clarke. I chose Maureen.

  Her mother was waiting anxiously on the front-door step.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come, Doctor, Maureen’s having terrible pains.”

  I questioned her going up the stairs.

  At twenty-eight weeks, Maureen certainly appeared to be in labour. In view of her toxaemia it was essential to get her into hospital. I sent Mrs Grimshaw to telephone the obstetric flying squad. Maureen begged me not to leave her.

  “The baby will be all right, Doctor?”

  “I’m sure it will,” I said, more optimistically than I felt.

  The minutes ticked by. Maureen’s pains became more regular. I thought of Faraday and Grandpa Tolley and wondered what could have happened to Mrs Grimshaw; the telephone box was only on the corner. If she didn’t hurry I might find myself having to deliver Maureen’s baby, which would be highly undesirable in the circumstances.

  “I wish Frank was here,” Maureen said. “Why’d the baby have to come early? They’re letting him out next month for good behaviour. Not me Dad though, on account of his record.”

  It was half an hour before Mrs Grimshaw came back, breathless and dishevelled.

  “Ruddy vandals,” she said. “Not a bleedin’ phone box in order. Oughta lock them up they did!”

  At another time I might have smiled as she castigated the rebels of society. As it was I waited less than patiently for the ambulance with its oxygen, premature baby unit, and trained obstetric team.

  By the time I got to Grandpa Tolley, having seen Maureen off into safe hands and wishing her luck, he was in a very bad way indeed. Nobody seemed to know his exact age but I think it was not far off the ninety-five he boasted. His neighbour, Mrs Riggs, was pretty old herself.

  “He knocked on the wall this morning,” she said, “he don’t seem able to catch his breath.”