The Life Situation

by Rosemary Friedman

  “I told you I don’t want to go to France!”

  “There’s no need to jump down my throat. I just thought how helpful it was of Mrs Fairbairn…where do you want to go? We have to think about booking. You know how it is in July and August.”

  “Nowhere. I don’t know.”

  “Is anything the matter?”

  “No. Just tired. Leave me alone.”

  When she got into bed beside him he pretended to be asleep. She put her arms round him. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Missed you,” he grunted.

  She wanted him to make love to her. He yawned. After a while he said: “Sorry darling; too tired.”

  She turned over and went to sleep. He lay with his eyes open, yearning for Marie-Céleste.

  “Karen?”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. Didn’t know you were asleep. Ever heard of ‘Ungaro’?”

  “Dresses?”

  “Mm. Are they very expensive?”

  “Very; Fortnum’s have them.”

  “How much?”

  “Much. Hundreds. Why?”

  He thought. “Book material. Go back to sleep.”

  He was back in Villefranche, Marie-Céleste’s white, bloodspattered dress abandoned in the wastepaper basket. There was something about the extravagance of the gesture that appealed to him. He had always wanted to be rich; very rich. The characters in his books led very opulent lives. ‘The rich are different from us,’ Scott Fitzgerald had said; to which Hemingway replied ‘Yes, they have more money.’ Wealth was as conditioning as poverty. It had a language of its own, less easy to understand because there were fewer people able to speak from knowledge. Those who were, generally remained strangely silent. He was aware that psychologically he was unsuited to the role of ‘rich man’. He did not think he would be able to withstand the predators; he would be the idle victim for swindlers, con-men, friends and family, deprived children, lost dogs and causes, and every lousy play every untalented friend of his had ever written. He could not truly say he cared for the attendant hobbies: racehorse owning, art collecting, skiing of either the wet or dry variety. There were other aspects which were more appealing. His manservant coming in the morning.

  “Good morning sir, I thought the light grey with the Old Harrovian tie…”

  The Aston Martin waiting outside; which would merit a first-class excess baggage charge even when empty. Never having to reserve a room before arriving. Luncheon at the Connaught where he would order two stewed prunes – He would not of course live permanently in England, there was insufficient scope. He would have homes in Montevideo, Paris and New York, a private island in Greece to which he would summon guests, sending their tickets…no of course not, he would have his private jet, a luxury yacht with hydroplanes and crew of fifty. His many houses would be staffed all the year round, ready for him at ten minutes’ notice. There would be fruit and flowers in the bedrooms; no shortage of women. They would look like characters from Harpers and Queen, for which they would be photographed in one of his many marble halls. They would be haughty looking in Balenciaga silk organza, hair by Carita, jewels by Van Cleef and Arpels. There would be works of art and porcelain dogs and Flemish tapestries in the background and they would change their dresses and jewellery a dozen times; Guy Laroche and pearls by Cartier; Givenchy, on the steps of the Palazzo with ancient diamond earrings…he liked that one…in all of them they would look as if they had smells under their noses and plums in their mouths.

  His time would be spent, apart from the various villas and his yacht, in his grouse butt (he’d always fancied himself in one of those hats with the ear-flaps), stuffing himself with caviar in expensive restaurants. He would be divorced from reality (probably also from a few wives), his best friend would be his cocker spaniel.

  With so many houses he would not of course need to frequent hotels. He would probably retain suites, however, at Frenchman’s Cove, the Mandarin, the Cipriani and the Lisbon Ritz. One never knew, did one, when one might be caught short?

  Life, he knew, would not be without its problems. Whether to wear the solid gold, wafer-thin chronometer on the sleek black crocodile strap or the pocket watch which told the date, day and month and was, of course, automatically adjusted to leap years. Whether or not to work. Whether, and if so to what extent, to support his impecunious relations. Whether he was being cultivated for his money or himself. Life, with at least seven million (he believed that this was the minimum sum generally quoted to qualify for the label ‘rich’) was certainly not easy. Its problems, however, were such with which he thought he was able to cope.

  Beside him Karen stirred.

  “Before you went away,” she said sleepily, “you forgot to leave the hosuekeeping money.”

  He woke at 7.30 as if roused by an alarm. Usually he was still more than half asleep when Karen left for work. Her side of the bed was empty; she must be downstairs making breakfast for the children. He turned over to go back to sleep, then remembered; Dr Adler. He had promised to phone. No he hadn’t. He had told him to stuff it. He couldn’t see him until Tuesday week anyway. He got out of bed and went into his study, locking the door.

  “Dr Adler speaking.”

  “Oscar John. You told me to phone.”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact I have a cancellation at three o’clock.”

  He had intended going to Marie-Céleste.

  “All right.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  Karen was in the bedroom. “Where have you been? I brought you some coffee.”

  “To make a note.”

  “I heard the phone tinkle.”

  “Must have knocked it. You’re sweet.”

  “I know.”

  Rosy came in to say goodbye. “Can I have 10p for flowers for Miss Jupp. She’s in hospital. Miss Hughes says it’s her appendix but we think it’s an abortion. She’s always at the bus-stop with this man…”

  “On the bed table.”

  There was a rattling of coins.

  “It’s all francs.”

  “That’s all I’ve got.” Where was the Onassis of his dream? “Ask Mummy.”

  “Mummy hasn’t got any change. I suppose I’ll have to take it out of my money box as usual. You owe me three pounds fifty. Shall I give your love to Araminta?”

  “Please yourself.”

  “It must be very strange without a father. I don’t think I’d like it. Her brother lives with him and this other woman. I don’t know whether I’d live with you or Mummy. It would depend what sort of mood you were in.”

  “You’ll miss your bus.”

  “I usually do. Daisy can’t find her other shoe.”

  “Under the bed. They’re always under the bed.” He finished the coffee and put his nose back under the bedclothes. “Bye.”

  He tried to recapture his Palazzo. He hoped his manservant would wake him at ten with orange juice, fresh of course, toast, an even pale bronze, not half burned half white like the toaster spewed forth, Normandy butter, guava jelly, Blue Mountain coffee and cream. The Guardian would of course have been ironed, not read and hastily re-assembled by Karen.

  “Daddy!” Daisy said.

  “What do you want?”

  “10p. Miss Jupp’s in hospital and we’re going to send flowers and everyone says…”

  “I know, I know, take it out of your money box.”

  “There isn’t anything to take! You haven’t given me my pocket money for three weeks…”

  The house in Paris would have to go.

  “Ask Rosy to lend it to you.”

  “I have. She won’t.”

  “Take it tomorrow.”

  “We’re not allowed.”

  “Christ all bloody mighty!” He flung back the bedclothes and went through the pockets of his suit. There must be 10p somewhere. His hand closed on a coin.

  “There!”

  “Thanks.” She flung her arms round his neck. She had always been the more affectionate of the two. With h
er blonde hair in bunches, her neat blue shirt and navy blue sweater she looked the picture of healthy schoolgirlhood.

  “Sorry I shouted.”

  “Did you?”

  He did so much shouting they no longer noticed.

  “Hurry or you’ll miss the bus.”

  “Rosy can’t find her essay. She says Mrs Hubble must have tidied it away.”

  He went back to sleep and dreamed of a station. He was standing on the platform and a train was pulling out. It was packed with children leaning out of the windows waving. The parents on the platform were crying and waving.

  He woke at ten. The house was quiet. Outside it was raining. He wished he was in Villefranche.

  He dressed and made more coffee, then sat at his desk. He had written one hundred pages of Death on the Riviera. Page 101 stared at him from the typewriter with only the numerals on its face. He had no idea how to fill it. Had forgotten what had gone before. It would take him a morning to read it through, refresh his memory and sort it out. He couldn’t be bothered. There was only one thing he wanted; Marie-Céleste. He picked up the telephone receiver then put it down again. An idea had occurred to him. An outrageous one. He went into the bathroom to shave.

  Her surgery was in Camden Town. He had passed it many times in the car. He parked down a side street outside a row of terraced houses. The plate on the door said ‘Dr M C Burns’ and the surgery hours. It was above a greengrocer’s. The linoleum on the stairs was worn. One door on the first floor said: ‘Toilet’, the other ‘Waiting Room’. He pushed this open and the smell of huddled humanity hit him.

  The receptionist he had so often spoken to on the telephone sat behind a long counter framed in shelves of medical record envelopes. He had thought of her as elderly but she was a neat blonde, no more than thirty.

  “Can I help you?” She smiled at him, pen poised, warmly sympathetic.

  He was about to say he was a patient then had awful thoughts about Marie-Céleste being struck off; a drug traveller – but he was not wearing a suit and carried no samples. He was concerned in case she recognized his voice. He slouched forward and adopted a whine.

  “I’m just stoppin’ in the distric’ with me Mum and wanted to see a Doc?”

  “Temporary resident?”

  “You might call it that.”

  She reached for a form. “Name?”

  “Do I’ave to ’ave one of them forms? I only want to arst ’im sumthink…” Stroke of genius that. “…Won’t keep ’im two minutes.”

  “You’ll have to fill in a form, I’m afraid, if you’re not registered with Dr Burns.”

  He had a brainwave.

  “What about private?”

  She looked at him doubtfully. “It’s two pounds for private patients.”

  “‘At’s OK. I don’t ’ave to ’ave no form then?”

  “Not if you wish to consult her privately.”

  “Oh yes I do Miss. Private.”

  “Take a seat then. We’ve quite a few people waiting Mr…?”

  “Johnson. Arthur Johnson.” He was enjoying himself.

  “Unless you’d like to make an appointment and come back in a little while?”

  “Nah. Tha’s all right. I don’ mine waitin’. Thanks very much Miss. Won’t keep ’er long. One o’ them problems!” He winked conspiratorially.

  She nodded with understanding and motioned him to a seat. He took a chair between an old man with no teeth and a dirty white muffler reading the racing news and a girl with false eyelashes, a tight skirt and shoes with pointed toes and stiletto heels.

  There was cheap, gay wallpaper on the walls and posters telling about keeping drugs away from children and the dangers of lung cancer from smoking. In the middle of the floor there was a box of bricks at which two grubby children squatted, and some infant-sized chairs. The magazines on the wall rack had been well read and he thought you could probably catch something quite nasty from them. He wondered how long he would have to wait. There were a few women of the sort they interviewed on television for the margarine ads, with dull hair, or headscarves, shapeless, colourless coats and shopping baskets; a young man with tight trousers, elevated heels and acne. A girl who looked no more than sixteen with a baby to whom she was talking soothingly. A fat schoolgirl with a red face and running eyes whom he thought should be at home in bed. The telephone rang constantly. It was so placed that you couldn’t quite catch what the receptionist said. A man in blue overalls came out of the door marked ‘Surgery’ clutching his prescription, one of the shopping ladies went in. The outside door opened and closed. He was no longer the last. The old man next to him coughed importantly and spat into a filthy handkerchief. He didn’t know how Marie-Céleste could stand it. Never understood how his father had stood it although he had been brought up with it. This was worse, far worse. The smell, and the patients, no attempt at cleanliness. One of the playing children came up to false eyelashes and pulled at her skirt.

  “Mum!”

  “Whatisit?”

  “Want to do pooh-pooh!” She fiddled with her knickers.

  “Why dinchersay? We’ll miss our turn.” She dragged the child to the door. “You stop there, Samantha,” she called to the other playing child who gave no indication that she had heard.

  It had not been like this when he was a boy but then there had been no National Health Service and the practice had been in Wimbledon. The patients came to the front door where the maid admitted them. They waited in the dining-room where his mother always kept flowers and copies of Tatler and Country Life. They were seen in his father’s cosy, comfortable, not very tidy study.

  His father lived only for his patients, his mother lived only for his father. She loved Oscar but seemed often remote, not really listening to what he had to say. Often he would bring back some startling piece of news from school and relate it to her while she was up to her elbows in pastry. They had a Mrs Rennie who cooked, but his mother did not trust her to produce dishes exactly to his father’s liking. As he spoke his mother would say ‘Mmm?’ and ‘Really?’ her eyes on the pastry. Sometimes he said: ‘Look with your face’ and she’d glance up surprised. At the end of some longwinded tale his mother would say ‘I’ve made the little meat balls just as he likes them but Mrs So and So’s decided to go into labour and no doubt it will be midnight and all he’ll want is a flask.’

  It wasn’t only meals and mealtimes which were disrupted by the exigencies of the practice. If it was sports day and he in the final three-legged you could bet your bottom dollar some incipient ulcer could be relied upon to perforate; if he had been chosen to recite ‘Lars Porsena of Clusium by the nine gods he swore…’ on the platform at Open Day, prizes to be distributed by a distinguished actress, long before his turn his father would have crept silently away to a fit or a fever if he managed to make it at all.

  Of course in those days there had been none of this locum lark. No emergency call service, no rota systems, no ancillary help. More nights than not his father left his bed to attend his patients. He dispensed his own medicines, was at risk twenty-four hours a day and rarely took holidays. Small and red-cheeked, tubby from his predilection for food, he was happy. He worked more hours than a docker, harder than a miner but would not have had it any other way. Even now, heading for seventy, he made few concessions.

  During the war when he was shaken up in the bag together with everyone else, he had elected to work in the East End in the midst of the worst bombing. When it was over, the house in Wimbledon had fallen beneath a V2 and he and Oscar’s mother, who had been equally active at the wheel of an ambulance, had decided to start again in practice by the sea. He was quite remarkable. The patients, as they always had, worshipped him. The Christmas sideboard with its load of food and drink and pens and pencils and warm gloves and knitted pullovers with dropped stitches bore witness to their devotion. Many of his pre-war patients had retired to Brighton simply to be looked after by him. They felt that his presence would in some way delay their ultimate
demise. It was Oscar’s considered opinion that it most probably did. His father was a good, solid old-fashioned product of between the wars. They were no longer made that way. Oscar admired him beyond measure. That his selfless attitude towards his patients satisfied a need in his father, as Dr Adler pointed out, did not alter his feelings one bit.

  “Mr Johnson,” he heard a voice call. “Mr Johnson.”

  The girl with the false eyelashes nudged him. “That’s you, innit?” she said. “I’m waitin’ for the amberlance for my Maureen.”

  Twelve

  Marie-Céleste’s surgery was nothing like his father’s, either in Wimbledon or in Brighton. There was linoleum on the floor and the walls were painted a sunshine yellow. There were more posters. This time to do with ‘When to call your doctor’ and family planning. The familiar pale blue back numbers of the British Medical Journal were stacked in bookcases round the walls (Ernest, he presumed, wouldn’t have them in the flat) and there was a white-painted trolley with tongue depressors and the usual instruments for inspecting the usual orifices. It was practical rather than sterile or luxurious. The most elegant thing about the room, which wasn’t large, was Marie-Céleste herself. She sat at the desk in a green wool skirt and sweater and dark brown snakeskin shoes. She was putting down the phone, which must have been the intercom, as he came in. She did not look at him for a moment.

  “Come in Mr Johnson, I understand you want to see me privat… Oscar! What are you doing here?”

  He sat down on one of the two worn, vinyl-seated chairs.

  “It’s me ’eart, doctor. It won’t stop banging.”

  She leaned back. “You’re very naughty.”

  “I like being naughty.”

  “Is anything wrong? I mean why did you come?”

  “Can’t come this afternoon. Wanted to see you.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Going to Dr Adler.”

  She looked concerned. “Nothing wrong?”

  “Just need to talk. Seem to be getting myself in a mess.”

  “Every afternoon?”

  He shook his head. “Just today. How was Ernest?” He had to know.