by Jo Brand
Martha: Speaking.
Charge Nurse: Hello, I’m Lesley Griffin, Charge Nurse at King’s A and E. We’ve got a Sarah McBride here.
Martha: Oh Jesus, is she all right?
Charge Nurse: She’ll be fine, just a bit concussed.
Martha: Concussed! Christ, what happened?
Charge Nurse: Well, we’re not really sure … I think she fell down some stairs. She says can you ring work for her and … something about a flower.
Martha: Yes, that’s our friend, I’ll talk to her.
Charge Nurse: She doesn’t want to worry her mum.
Martha: OK. Can I come in and see her?
Charge Nurse: Tomorrow.
Martha: Thanks, bye.
Martha to Flower 10.24 p.m.:
Charlie: Hello?
Martha: Hello, Charlie, it’s Martha. Can I talk to Flower?
Charlie: Hold on.
Flower: Hello?
Martha: It’s me, Sarah’s in hospital.
Flower: Oh God, what’s happened to her?
Martha: Concussed, apparently. Fell down some stairs.
Flower: Oh yeh? That’s quite hard in a flat. Billy?
Martha: I wouldn’t be surprised, but there’s nothing we can do tonight.
Flower: Has she got her mobile? I might text her.
Martha: That’d be nice … I’ll go up in the morning and see how things are.
Flower: How long’s she been with Billy now? About two years … I remember that with Charlie, that was when he stopped following me to work. Two years — that’s when you’re so familiar with each other, you start to let things slip a little on the mystery of romance front.
Martha: Hitting someone’s hardly categorised as letting the romance slip.
Flower: You know what I mean though.
Martha: ‘Spose so, not that I’m the expert recently.
Flower: How’s Lump?
Martha: Lump’s fine.
Flower: What are we going to do about this Sarah and Billy situation? Do you think she might give him the push now? I don’t think it’s going to happen on its own. She’s that kind of mad about him that she’ll let him do this for years. I think we should help him.
Martha looked down at her pad on which she’d been doodling and surveyed her list.
Hang him and make it look like suicide.
Contract killing.
Push him in the river.
Tinker with the brakes on his car.
Giant kebab skewer.
Martha: I think we should encourage him to fuck off.
A faint whiff of urine, jumble-sale clothes and the sickly-sweet smell which clings to illness and death and has probably been commercially produced as a perfume by Joan Collins, greeted Martha as she entered the main door of the local general hospital. Being located in SE5 it found itself at the very centre of shabby scabbiness and witnessed a daily showing of stabbing, maiming and other acts of random violence. Martha felt like she’d smoked a whole packet of fags passing, as she did, through the collection of wraiths and strays that hang about outside hospitals wringing that final drag out of whatever’s-on-offer-this-week-at-the-newsagents, before retiring back to the oncology ward to nurse their scalded lungs. However, their lungs hadn’t been so shot that they couldn’t manage a few cursory comments about Martha’s appearance.
‘Fat cow,’ attempted a fat red-faced bloke. Martha had long ago given up on pointing out the fundamental inequity of this exchange from fat bloke to fat woman. The other smokers, including two women, cackled phlegmily. Martha’s face burned and it annoyed her so much that after years of this sort of verbal public assessment, she still couldn’t just let it wash over her. She was tempted to try, ‘Well, at least I haven’t got a terminal illness,’ but that seemed way out of proportion. Instead she contented herself with a ‘Go fuck yourselves,’ at a volume not even a dog could hear, and walked on.
A sign on the wall pointed the way to a series of ‘Wars’, the Ds having been scratched off during a drunken rampage by some Casualty visitors who, not content with tormenting the staff in A and E, had done a quick tour of the hospital, pissing in the window boxes, writing ‘knob’ all over the walls and making the surprisingly astute observation that the founder of the hospital was ‘a wanker’.
Graffiti of this nature always turned Martha into a rabid, big-bosomed Tory MP and she often imagined herself strangling those responsible with one hand whilst scrubbing with the other at the offending words with a huge Brillo pad. She believed that a decent environment begets decent behaviour — yet more evidence, Flower thought, of a lurking unreconstructed reactionary in her soul.
Ward 7, in which Sarah was stranded, was at the end of a long corridor peppered with soiled dressings, bits of fluff and the odd human blob lying groaning on a trolley. This scene would not have been out of place in Scutari, thought Martha as she and the Lump humped their way along, and suddenly her plans to eject the Lump in this very institution seemed mad and a home birth even in the dust repository she called home, seemed preferable.
One positive side to bad hospital care, she mused, is that at least it discourages the malingerers because one has to be really ill to want to stay. This technique, Martha thought, was also employed by teenage sales staff in the West End, who rely on people’s desperation to buy because they always looked at her as if she’d just shat in their sandwiches whenever she made the first of many polite enquiries about whether they had any clothes that fitted people without an eating disorder.
Sarah’s ward was a sort of grey colour, as were the people in it. The staple occupant of these wards, the elderly, allegedly confused woman, was much in evidence and amongst them Sarah looked like a child who has spent too long at her grandma’s.
Sarah had two black eyes and some bruising round her neck. Apart from that, she looked great, thought Martha enviously, who in a similar position would look like a Balkan peasant who had not had access to ‘facilities’ for some years.
The woman in the next bed, who looked like Miss Havisham’s mum, appeared to be blind and had been sat at the end of her bed for a better view of the ward for no apparent reason, was shouting continuously, ‘Please kill me! Please kill me!’
‘I fucking well will if she doesn’t shut up,’ said Sarah grimly as Martha drew up a chair to the bed.
‘What’s the matter with her?’ whispered Martha.
‘You don’t need to whisper,’ said Sarah. ‘She’s deaf as well, you know.’
Martha started to cry.
‘Your bloody hormones,’ Sarah sighed. ‘Come on, it takes more than this normally to set you off.’
‘Sorry,’ said Martha. ‘Poor woman though.’ She sensed Sarah wanted to talk about Sarah. ‘So how did this happen?’ she asked, feeling like a detective.
‘Fell down the stairs outside the flat,’ said Sarah, feeling like a suspect.
‘Oh, come on,’ said Martha.
‘No, really, I swear,’ said Sarah.
‘Did Billy push you?’
‘No.’
‘Trip you?’
‘No.’
‘Swing you round by your hair several times until you had gathered enough momentum to clear the balcony, then let you fly?’
‘No,’ laughed Sarah. ‘Look, it really was an accident.’
‘I believe you,’ said Martha. She didn’t.
‘Thanks,’ said Sarah, who knew she didn’t. ‘Well, Bill and I had a bit of a set-to last night — no, no fisticuffs or anything like that — but we had a row and he stormed off. I assumed he’d gone out for fags so I went on to the landing to see if he was coming back and fell over a pile of new Yellow Pages some idiot had dumped there. I could have broken my fucking neck! Bill found me on his way back from the shop.’
Martha realised the woman in the bed opposite was listening to every word and conspiratorially shaking her head to indicate she thought Sarah’s story wasn’t true either. Martha tried to summon up a look on her face which conveyed the message,
‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right,’ but the look in fact just conveyed constipation.
‘So,’ she said to Sarah, ‘how long are they keeping you in for?’
‘Only tonight.’
‘Do you want a lift home tomorrow?’ asked Martha, even though she didn’t have a car.
‘No, it’s all right, Bill will collect me,’ said Sarah.
‘Oh, that’s good of him.’ Martha was trying to sound genuine.
Sarah began gingerly to pull herself out of bed and reached for her handbag, a purchase which had cost her three hundred quid, but made her feel good as she swung it down Oxford Street on a Saturday morning while elderly people and weaker children were plunged by the never-ending bustle of shoppers into the path of oncoming vehicles.
As Sarah passed the end of the blind woman’s bed, her swinging handbag caught the woman’s head a glancing blow and set off another stream of entreaties. Sarah looked embarrassed, muttered sorry rather pointlessly and moved off quickly. Martha went over and held the woman’s hands and patted them as if to try and convey she was sorry that she’d received a knock on the head.
‘Who’s that?’ said the woman. ‘Jack, is that you?’ making Martha doubt Jack’s positive qualities if his arrival was heralded by a bang on the head.
‘That’s her son,’ said the woman opposite. ‘Never bothers to come in and see her. She’d be better off dead, the poor cow, the way her family treat her. We’ve often discussed bumping her off late at night, you know, when the volume of her shouting gets too much and the night staff just leave her to get on with it. Maybe we could get her boyfriend to do it,’ she said with a wink, looking in the direction of Sarah’s bed.
Martha rather liked the idea of a murderous coterie of seventy-year-old ladies in a medical ward, applying a spontaneous form of euthanasia.
‘Anyway,’ said another woman two beds up, ‘what are you going to do about her bloke? You’ve got to teach ‘im a lesson. We all think so, don’t we, gels?’
South-East London’s hardened elite of grey-haired working-class women was in an unforgiving mood and nodded its head as one.
Martha found herself slightly on the defensive, much to her surprise. ‘He might not have done it, you know,’ she said.
‘Oh, pull the other one, love,’ said a woman on Sarah’s side who looked like a drag act. ‘We saw the shifty-looking bastard last night. He done it all right.’
Were these women victims themselves? wondered Martha. She had a sudden vision of all their husbands as skinny little henpecked anorexics quivering against the wall protecting their testicles as these huge women ran riot round their kitchens. She tried to substitute it for a picture of bullying thugs but couldn’t manage it.
Sarah appeared at the door of the ward having managed a quickie makeover in the toilets, bringing colour to her cheeks and sparkle to her eyes.
‘Oh darling, you shouldn’t have bothered just for little old me,’ said Martha.
‘She didn’t,’ said a voice behind her and she .turned round to see Billy smiling and holding what she considered to be a rather aggressive bunch of flowers. Why would you want to buy anyone red-hot pokers?
The eyes of Ward 7’s women were immediately boring into him and urging him to do the decent thing, something unspeakable using a blender and his testicles, she thought. Martha half-expected pantomime booing to start or a pelting of Billy with used dressings and wondered why they hadn’t warned her about Billy’s presence with a timely ‘Behind you!’
‘Evening, ladies,’ said Billy, and suddenly they turned from an elderly death squad to fluttery, girly girls.
‘Evening,’ they chorused, several semitones higher than five minutes ago and turned with great interest to their Woman’s Owns.
Billy looked towards the shouting woman in the next bed who seemed to have slumped over backwards with her mouth open. ‘Is she all right?’ he said with such a lack of concern that he might have been looking at a friend’s pet rabbit’s eczema.
‘Oh God,’ said Sarah. ‘Call a nurse.’
Before Martha could stop herself or even think about what she was saying, she turned to Sarah and said, ‘You’ve killed her with your handbag,’ and then she started to laugh.
The nursing staff arrived and drew the curtain round the bed affording poor Miss Lucas the only dignity she’d ever had in that place, but they could still be heard trying cursorily to revive her, not making much of an effort because of her age and the amount of irritation she caused. Martha made her excuses and left, aware of the strange looks she was getting as she and the Lump tried to suppress their laughter.
When she got home, she phoned Flower and related the details of her visit. In a way, the death of poor old Miss Lucas, ancient as she was and expected as it may have been, had totally overshadowed the presence of Sarah in hospital and the reasons why she was there. Eventually though, Flower got round to it.
‘How did Billy seem?’ she said.
‘Well, very cool really,’ said Martha.
‘What, not woman-beaterish?’ said Flower.
‘What is woman-beaterish?’ said Martha.
‘Dunno,’ said Flower. ‘So did he do it?’
‘Oh, I think so,’ said Martha, ‘but Sarah doesn’t want to say.’
‘So what can we do?’ said Flower. ‘Perhaps my brothers could go round.’
‘We’re not the Mafia. That sort of thing only works in The Godfather,’ Martha said sensibly. Besides, she wanted to add, your brothers are about as scary as some frailer members of the Women’s Institute.
‘Well, let’s work on Sarah first then while we think what to do about Billy,’ Flower said, sounding bright. ‘How about self-defence classes?’
Martha had visions of a lot of emotionally needy women clustered round a muscle-bound knucklehead. She looked down at Lump and thought she’d better just watch.
‘Let’s all go,’ said Flower, as though it was a nice day out.
‘State of you, love. Walked into a door, did you?’
Another cheerily executed gem emanated from the fag-bearing lips of Mr Cancer the fat, red-faced champion smoker, as Sarah slunk out of the hospital clutching the handbag that allegedly killed Miss Lucas and a carrier bag of belongings bearing the logo of a very expensive shop in Bond Street because Sarah still felt this sort of thing mattered.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ she said, loud enough even for the poor dear departed Miss Lucas to hear.
Billy was waiting on a double yellow, his foot idly accelerating in time to some music. ‘All right?’ he asked tenderly as Sarah got in the car and she wished she could have videoed this moment and played it to Flower and Martha who, she was convinced, were beginning to build up a profile of Billy, not dissimilar from that of a serial killer.
‘Yep, fine,’ she answered.
Billy squeezed her hand and accelerated away. ‘I’ll drop you off home,’ he said, ‘and see you after work. Is there anything you need?’
‘No thanks,’ said Sarah, thinking friends with very poor short-term memories would be helpful and save her from having to pay lip-service to Martha and Flower and the idea of sorting out Billy.
Billy pulled up outside the flat, gave Sarah one of those kisses your grandparents give one another which would be considered obscene if their tongues ever got involved. As Billy drove off and checked his rearview mirror, he saw Martha and Flower rise like a couple of bedraggled phoenixes from behind two large pot plants by the front entrance. He smiled.
‘Oh God, I think he saw us,’ said Flower.
‘Oh, so what?’ said Martha, who once she had hit the deck in her condition had begun to believe she wouldn’t get up again without the help of a first-aid team.
‘What are you two doing here? Come to talk me into self-defence classes or some piss-awful women’s group, I suppose?’ said Sarah sarcastically.
Martha and Flower looked at each other, embarrassed.
‘Oh you wankers,’ said Sarah, who didn’t believe the paltry a
rray of English words available for abuse should be confined to just the one gender.
‘You can’t be a wanker if you’re a girl,’ said Flower.
There then ensued a pointless argument about whether women look as ridiculous as men When they are wanking and whether someone’s a wanker because they haven’t got anyone to have sex with or because of their appearance during the aforementioned act.
Flower refused to believe women indulged at all at which Martha laughed uproariously and then, seeing the expression on Sarah’s face, changed the subject.
‘I have booked us in for self-defence classes this evening,’ said Flower.
‘Well, that won’t look obvious at all, will it?’ said Sarah.
‘Don’t tell him,’ said Martha, whose way out of a tight spot always involved a badly conceived lie. ‘This is all for you, Sarah. I mean, why someone who is eight months’ pregnant is indulging in any form of rigorous exercise along with someone who’s just been thrown down the stairs by their boyfriend…’
‘I’ve told you loads of times,’ said Sarah crossly. ‘I tripped.’
‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’
‘Oh, not pissing Shakespeare now as well,’ said Sarah.
‘Look,’ said Flower, ‘I’ve found these really good self-defence classes on the net, Sar, and I’m not saying Billy did push you down the stairs, but he did whack you one the other day, so it’s probably sensible … and besides, it might come in useful somewhere else.’
‘Cancer patients maybe,’ mused Sarah.
‘Why is that bloke so fat when he’s got cancer?’ said Martha.
Flower didn’t know what they were talking about and assumed it was someone from a celebrity magazine.
‘So when are the classes?’ said Sarah.
‘Tonight,’ said Flower.
‘And what am I going to tell Billy about where I’m going?’ said Sarah.
‘Just tell him we’re going down the pub and if he kicks up a fuss tell him to wait five hours and then you can come home and knock him out with the new skills you’ve acquired,’ said Martha.
