Dottie

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  ‘You got my letter,’ she said, smiling shyly and stammering a little. ‘I was afraid . . . you might’ve moved, but I’m so glad . . . you’ve come. I have the address here, and the telephone number.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dottie said, bewildered by the woman’s words.

  ‘Didn’t you get my letter?’ she asked, her face crest-fallen and suddenly apprehensive.

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ Dottie said, feeling she had contributed to a crisis. ‘I’ve moved from that address.’

  ‘Oh, but that’s all right,’ the librarian said, brightening up. ‘I can tell you all about it now. If you’ve got a minute . . .’

  While Estella went back to the children’s library for Hudson, the woman told Dottie her story. She had written to her about a man who came to the library asking questions. His name was Michael Mann, and he was looking for people who could tell him something about Dr Murray. ‘Do you remember him? The old doctor who used to come here every day to read the paper. You . . . you were very upset when I told you he had died. I’ve always remembered you because of that. Mr Mann said he was directed to the library by Dr Murray’s GP. I asked him why he wanted to know about the old doctor, and he said he was his grandson. Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t it wonderful? I told him everything I thought he would be interested in, and I mentioned you. He’d love to meet you. He said he’d love to meet you. He lives at the old doctor’s house in Clapham. It’s been rented these many years, but now he’s back and he’s living in it. One of the flats in it, he said. I’ve got his address and telephone number. He asked if you could get in touch . . .’

  Dottie shrugged, a little apprehensive and reluctant. It was a fine story, but she had known nothing about Dr Murray. What could she tell this grandson? He was a courteous and dashing gentleman, whose smile if she caught it was enough to brighten her whole day. He had a way of lifting his hat to her that made her want to rush to him and embrace him, and soothe the pain that made him dip his head to her as he did.

  The woman looked disappointed, and glanced at Estella who had been back long enough to hear part of the story. She too looked disappointed, and dropped her eyes to Hudson, who was tugging insistently at her, wanting to be taken back to The Owl and the Pussycat. Dottie shrugged again. Of course he was not just an old man who had taken his hat off to her, but a stranger who had lavished affection on her and made her feel its absence in her life. What good would that knowledge do his grandson? She would see him if they were all so sure. She did not think there was anything she could tell him.

  The librarian looked delighted, almost overjoyed, and Dottie wondered why it should matter to her one way or another. She didn’t take his number but left her address for Mr Mann to get in touch, and her telephone number at work in case he chose to call. While they went round the market looking for mullet and some fresh vegetables for their dinner that night, Estella’s treat, Dottie told her about the old doctor. As she talked about the kind and gallant old black man who had befriended her, and offered her such casual deference as she had never known in her life, Dottie recalled how important he had been to her in those gloomy days. Estella smacked her on the back of the palm, her eyes flashing with anger. ‘And you were going to refuse to see this grandson,’ she said.

  ‘It was the first time I’d heard of Algeria,’ Dottie said, remembering. ‘I knew nothing about the fighting going on there. He was reading the newspaper in the library, and as I walked in he raised the paper triumphantly and pointed to the headline. Something about the French losing control of Algeria. His face was radiant with joy, his finger stabbing the paper gently, making sure I saw. I looked up Algeria in the encyclopaedia . . . although I don’t remember reading anything about Ahaggars. After that I saw Algeria in the newspapers every day, and saw how the war against the French had become such an inspiration to others who wanted their freedom.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever speak to him?’ Estella asked.

  Dottie shook her head, ashamed of herself.

  A Trick of the Light

  1

  Sophie held her breath with amazement when Dottie described what the librarian had told her. Her jaw dropped open in exaggerated surprise, although she was not intending to seem ironic. She wanted to make sure Dottie understood that she was avid for more. A long-lost grandson had come to look for them! Sophie imagined a rich bequest that the old doctor had left for them, a treasure chest in the deepest part of a cave in Venezuela, or a real gold mine in Australia, or a rich and fertile ranch in the flatlands of Argentina. He must’ve been secretly in love with them, or wished he was. Or they may have reminded him of someone, a long-lost someone. Oh how incredibly romantic!

  Dottie expressed some doubts about the bequest, and tried to argue her case. She saw at once that her words irritated Sophie, but she did not stop. This was not a matter of romance and adventure, she argued, but of guilt and atonement. Sophie’s attention began to wander once she grasped that it was going to be a story that was long on description and short on drama. That kind of tale did not appeal to her. It was sure to have too many maybes and perhapses. It was typical of the way Dottie tried to twist everything in her favour, though, so that she could make it seem that she knew everything there was to know in the world, and everyone else was a hopeless dunce.

  Sophie was much improved now, a recovery she credited to a handsome young doctor whose name was Newton. It was he who had taken her off the tranquiliser regime and forced her to talk about the feelings that made her lethargic and miserable. He was astonished, he said, that so little had been done for her by her doctor. She told him everything he wanted to know, and after several sessions with him he said that he understood her case much better than he had done at first. He had told her that to her face, stuttering a little and colouring as if he was doing something naughty. Sophie could see that he was inclined to put the blame for her condition on Dottie, for being domineering and reluctant to allow Sophie to grow up and make her own decisions. He said it mostly in questions, but Sophie understood the drift of his case and asked him openly if he thought Dottie was something to do with her sickness. The doctor shrugged, then stroked his chin, which was more than enough meaning for Sophie.

  With only minimal encouragement from Dr Newton, she poured out all her grievances against her sister. She had had her brought back from a boarding school in Hastings, a lovely place near the sea where the sun shone on the cliffs and glittered on the water. They had gone for picnics and donkey rides, and once they had gone exploring in the caves under the cliffs. The people at the school were teaching her to swim, and in the new year she was to attend music classes with some of her friends. But Dottie had her removed from there and had her sent to a school for dunces in Wandsworth. They taught them nothing there, just made them do jobs and shouted at them for not trying hard enough. Also Dottie made her go to work when she was too ill, and interfered in her love affairs, chasing away the two men she had really loved. It was that that had made her ill in the first place. Perhaps she wanted the men for herself, but no one would look at her.

  For some reason, and without giving the matter any prior thought, Sophie did not mention her child Hudson. The doctor did not ask about him, had no reason to do so. After a few breathless moments of terror when she thought that she would be caught out in a terrible crime, Sophie began to enjoy a new sense of freedom. It dawned on her that, if she wanted to, she could pretend that Hudson was not her child at all but Dottie’s, and no one would know. Not the doctor, or the sister or anyone else. For a while, anyway. Then she could start afresh and try to get her life together without having all that to worry about.

  Dr Newton wrote everything down in his book, and despite his professional self-control could not suppress an occasional grimace of surprise or prevent an involuntary clenching of the jaws at the story his patient told him. The depravity and squalor of human beings was sometimes too incredible for belief, he thought, and he was the last person to get easily worked up over a little misery. Anyone could s
ee that Sophie was one of life’s innocents, and it was incredible that her tormentor should be none other than her only sister. Incredible but quite predictable! Yet for centuries starry-eyed intellectuals and empty-headed philosophers had waffled about the nobility of Man. And his Divinity, for God’s sake! He would invite them to take a look at this Goddess and her Gorgon of a sister for a start.

  Of course, much of what she was saying was an expression of her sense of being victimised, scapegoating her sister and casting herself as the heroine of a melodrama as most sick women do, but the substance was probably accurate. The family history, hints of which the patient gave away, probably lay at the heart of the matter. There was no need to labour the point and give needless ammunition to the political neanderthals, the self-satisfied thugs of the Right, but not much could be expected from such a history of defeat and squalor. The mother, from the bits and pieces he had heard, was probably an alcoholic and a prostitute, half-caste or Eurasian to judge from appearances. The children were neglected and ultimately institutionalised. Predictably enough they were traumatised and hostile.

  The doctor persisted with gently probing questions, and was gratified to see that after only a very few sessions Sophie began to lose interest in her sister, and wanted to talk about issues more deeply buried in her psyche. He was not a psychiatrist, or even, Heaven forbid, an analyst, – anal-cysts, as he liked to think of them, with all their obsessions with faeces and sex – so he was not really interested in this line of enquiry. He encouraged her views on the tall, dark orderly who worked in her ward instead. He knew she was interested in him and he wanted to be clear what their relationship was. Of course, her difficulties had not gone away by this change of interest but that was not his problem. At least it was a healthy demonstration of natural appetites, and frankly it was not that surprising for someone of her intelligence.

  He was a physician and not a psychiatrist, but he was still one of those required to make a decision on what would be the best environment for the patient. There was not such a great deal they could do for her emphysema, although a good diet, careful practice and medication would keep her going for many years yet. The question was whether she would be better off with her sister, whom Dr Newton had never met but who sounded a total harridan, or whether she was better off in one of the semi-supervised, self-catering units that the hospital championed. The local authority contributed heavily to them, relieving the hospital of the financial burden and also freeing the doctors and nurses for other more important cases. They were a good idea, he thought, and if the hospital did not make use of them they were bound to be withdrawn. Aside from their practical attraction, these units were also a half-way house for the patients, allowing them to become accustomed to the community in a protected environment first before being exposed again to society. He thought Sophie would be an ideal candidate for a place.

  That was another reason for the doctor’s pleasure at the interest she was showing in the orderly, for the orderly himself had been a patient before being transferred to the intermediate units. He now worked at the hospital and was well on his way to becoming a useful member of society again. Or as useful as he was ever likely to be. For Dr Newton did not hide the fact from himself that the patients he was dealing with were mostly lumpen. He was a warm-hearted man, he knew that, but that did not mean he was a sentimentalist. Lumpen were lumpen, and nothing much could be done about that. But weren’t lumpen entitled to their own bit of happiness? On what grounds could he justify returning this unfortunate woman to her hostile surroundings when an opportunity for some happiness existed for her? He was the last person to worry about re-claiming the moral authority of the doctor to interfere in patients’ lives, all that grandiose self-love and hubris, but if he could ameliorate the sufferings of such unfortunates with a discreet sleight of hand . . .

  Sophie told Dottie about the doctor, and his caressingly warm voice. She passed on her suspicion that Dr Newton fancied her, and reported the sour and jealous looks the sister gave her as a result. ‘He’s always stopping by to give me a bit of chat, and he asks such questions! He never wants to go, which makes that Sister Cow-Face green with envy. She’d do anything to get him. You know, I saw her polishing his glasses for him the other day, chatting him up shamelessly. He thinks you’re the one making me ill, Sis,’ she said, and paused for a moment to see the effect of her words. She laughed to see Dottie look at her sharply with surprise. ‘He says you bullied me into sickness, and dominated me ever since I was small. It was because we had no mother to look after us properly. He suspects you interfered with me, I think. And you chased my men away . . .’

  ‘He said that!’ Dottie exclaimed, feeling the blood drain from her face with shock.

  ‘He thinks you are frustrated with your own life, and so you try to live through me,’ Sophie said, speaking the words carefully, as if referring to ideas she had memorised. Some of her vocabulary had come in a package with the orderly, who had taught her to embellish and refine the doctor’s tentatively expressed ambiguities, and persuaded her about the virtues of being honest to her sister. ‘Why do you do that if it makes me miserable? Why do you oppress me? I asked the doctor to tell me but he didn’t. He shook his head and told me to think about it. But I’m asking you, Sis, for both our goods. We can’t just go on pretending that everything’s all right.’

  Dottie resisted the temptation to argue and offer justifications for herself. She deserved all this, she thought, not because she was guilty of these trumped-up wrongs she was being accused of but because for years she had put up with this kind of treatment from everybody, and there was no reason why any of them should stop. She glanced at Hudson to see if he was listening, if he was taking any of this in. He had come visiting as well and was perched comfortably at the foot of the bed, surrounded by real and imaginary toys with which he was deeply engrossed in a complicated game. Estella was there too, listening uncomfortably to Sophie’s grumbling.

  ‘The doctor had no right to say anything like that,’ Estella said, looking at Dottie and wanting her to make a protest.

  Sophie ignored the comment, and after a moment Dottie changed the subject. It was at that point that she began telling the story of Dr Murray’s grandson, making Sophie gasp with surprise. Estella already knew part of the story, but she was as avid in her attention as if this was the first telling. It was not only because it would dispel the meanness she had witnessed and allow her to forget her own feeble intervention that she listened so eagerly, but because she thought the story of the old doctor genuinely beautiful, full of surprises that one had no notion of expecting. A man to rejoice in, she thought.

  It was to be Estella’s last visit to the hospital before her move to Birmingham. Everywhere she went and everything she did made her sad. She was sorry to leave the flat, and she was almost all the time unsure about leaving London. She was afraid of losing the person she had become once she was back in her old home-town, where she would have to work hard to live her own life without distressing her parents. It had been easier away from them, although she had tried to tell them otherwise. They were worried that Marcel or Georgia would surface in her in some way, and when she was around tried to hem her in with questions and rules. Estella liked to think that she resembled the young Georgia, before all the terrors stalking her finally overcame her. Madeline had told her she did, and the thought filled Estella with pleasure. It assuaged some of the guilt she felt that she had no affection or any attachment to her mother.

  She found herself already missing Dottie. There was so much she had neglected to ask about her, just as there were so many things she had suppressed about herself, and that made her wonder if she had been too smug and selfish, too satisfied that she was doing Dottie good to worry enough about her sensitivities. She would write it all down in a letter to her after she left, and she had already made Dottie swear to write long letters to her in Birmingham, telling her about everything. Despite all the fervent assurances the two friends had given each ot
her to stay in touch, though, there was an air of leave-taking in the way Estella lingered over the places they had known, as if she suspected that her fervour would be impossible to sustain all those miles away and in the midst of the new experiences she hoped would befall her.

  ‘He rang me at work and asked if he could come to the house in Horatio Street to meet me,’ Dottie said, addressing Sophie although it was already clear that the latter was not interested. ‘I said no, of course, not knowing who he might be. I was in the typing pool when the phone rang, so I had to take the call at Mrs Waterson’s desk again. Not the best place for explanations. The old cow was pretending to be doing her accounts. There’s only one phone in that office, and it’s on her desk. Guess why! She’s got this idea that left to ourselves we would spend the whole day on the phone to all our admirers. I could feel her whole body straining to hear the conversation, especially once it was obvious that it was a personal call and a man was at the other end. When I said that perhaps it would be best to meet somewhere else, a pub or something rather than at home, she snickered with a kind of mockery and rearranged herself on her chair.’ As she said this Dottie mimicked Mrs Waterson, busily rocking herself from side to side with self-righteous and matronly dignity. Sophie looked on with an amused smile.