How to Be Good

  ‘Anyway,’ he says. ‘The turtles. It was really weird, yeah? ’Cos I had this dream about blue turtles, and then Sting, you know, the singer, well, I don’t like him much, I used to like the Police when I was a kid but I think his solo stuff is bollocks pardon my French, anyway he brings out an album called The Dream of the Blue Turtles. So. . .’

  He shrugs. The rest – the eyebrow-piercing and the brooches – is clearly meant to be self-explanatory, although I can’t help feeling that he’s missed out a couple of steps of the decision-making process.

  ‘And I’ve always had this thing about turtles anyway. I’ve always thought they could see stuff that we can’t, yeah?’

  The children stare at their father, clearly baffled.

  ‘What can they see?’ asks Molly.

  ‘Good question, Molly.’ He points at her. ‘You’re good. You’re sharp. I’m going to have to watch you.’ Molly looks pleased, but there is no attempt to answer the question.

  ‘He doesn’t know,’ says Tom with a snort.

  ‘Oh, I know all right. But maybe now’s not the time.’

  ‘When’s the time, then?’

  ‘Do you want to show GoodNews his room?’ says David to the children, clearly with the intention of bringing the subject of turtles and their psychic powers to a close; and as GoodNews doesn’t want to expand on his theories anyway, he picks up his bags and goes upstairs.

  David turns to me.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘What am I supposed to think?’

  ‘I know he talks nonsense some of the time. Try not to get bogged down in the superficial stuff.’

  ‘What else is there?’

  ‘You don’t pick up a vibe?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. Oh well.’ In other words: some people – the intuitive, soulful and spiritual among us – can pick up a vibe, and others – the flat, dull, literalists, like me – can’t. I resent this.

  ‘What vibe should I be picking up, then, according to you?’

  ‘It’s not according to me. It’s there. It’s interesting that Molly and I can feel it and you and Tom can’t.’

  ‘How do you know Tom can’t? How do you know Molly can?’

  ‘Did you notice that Tom was rude to him? If you pick up the vibe, you wouldn’t be rude. Molly isn’t rude. She got it the first time she saw him.’

  ‘And me? Was I rude?’

  ‘Not rude. But sceptical.’

  ‘And that’s wrong?’

  ‘You can almost see it, what he has. If you know how to look.’

  ‘And you don’t think I do?’ I don’t know why this bothers me so much, but it does. I want to know how to look; or at least, I want David to think of me as the sort of person who might know how to look.

  ‘Calm down. It doesn’t make you a bad person.’

  ‘That’s not true, though, is it? According to you. That’s precisely why I’m a bad person. Because all I saw was the eyebrows, not the . . . the . . . aura.’

  ‘We can’t all be everything.’ And he smiles that smile, and goes to join the others.

  ‘There are a few things GoodNews has a problem with,’ says David when they have all come down again.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t really agree with beds,’ says GoodNews.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Do you mind if we sleep in them?’ I want to sound dry and light, like a nice white wine, but I fear that what comes out is a lot more vinegary than that.

  ‘What other people do is their business,’ says GoodNews. ‘I just think they make you soft. Take you further away from how things really are.’

  ‘And how are things?’

  David shoots me a look. Not the old-style, I-hate-you-and-I-wish-you-were-dead look I would have got, once upon a time; this is the new-style, I’m-sooooo-disappointed look, and for a moment I am nostalgic for the days when hatred was our common currency. It was a currency that worked, at the time, just as pigs and bales of wheat must have worked. And though you can see why pigs were abandoned, they at least had the virtue of simplicity.

  ‘That’s a big question, Katie,’ says GoodNews. ‘And I don’t know if you’re ready for the big answer.’

  ‘You are, aren’t you, Mum?’ says Tom, loyally.

  ‘Anyway,’ says David. ‘GoodNews would like the bed taken out of the spare room. Because there isn’t really room for him to sleep on the floor if it stays there.’

  ‘Right. And where shall we put it?’

  ‘I’ll put it in my office,’ says David.

  ‘Can I take my bed out?’ Molly asks. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘What’s wrong with your bed?’ I address this to David rather than Molly, just so that he can see what a mess of the world his friend is making.

  ‘I don’t agree with it,’ says Molly.

  ‘What, precisely, don’t you agree with?’

  ‘I just don’t. They’re wrong.’

  ‘When you have your own flat, you can sleep on nails for all I care. While you’re here, you’ll sleep in a bed.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says GoodNews. ‘I’m causing trouble, aren’t I? Please, forget it. It’s cool.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ David says.

  ‘No, really. I can cope on a bed.’ There is a pause, and he looks at David, who has clearly become GoodNews’s representative on Earth.

  ‘The other thing that GoodNews was – well, we both were – worried about was where he’s going to heal people.’

  ‘He was intending to heal them here?’

  ‘Yes. Where else?’

  ‘I thought he was only here for a couple of nights.’

  ‘Probably he will be. But he needs to work. And he has commitments to people. So, you know. If it does turn out to be a bit longer than a couple of days . . .’

  ‘The spare bedroom’s no good?’

  David looks at him, and he shrugs.

  ‘Not ideal,’ says GoodNews. ‘Because of the bed. But if there’s nothing else . . .’

  ‘Funnily enough, we’ve got an empty healing room that we never use.’

  ‘I’m afraid sarcasm is one of Katie’s indulgences,’ David says.

  ‘I’ve got loads of others, though. Millions of them.’ And I suddenly remember that one of my most recent indulgences recently visited our home, and David was incredibly nice about it, and I feel bad. ‘Sorry. Maybe your bedroom is the best place for now.’

  ‘Fine. I can do good work there. It has a nice atmosphere, you know?’

  ‘And the last thing is, GoodNews is a vegetarian.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘A vegan, actually.’

  ‘Good. Very sensible. Much better for you. Is that it?’

  ‘I think so. For the time being.’

  ‘Enjoy your stay,’ I tell GoodNews, who is sure that he will be very happy here. For my part, I am sure that he will never ever leave.

  David cooks chicken pieces for us and vegetables for everyone while he and GoodNews talk in the kitchen, and then we have our first meal together. The main topic of conversation is GoodNews: GoodNews and the turtles (what they see, it transpires, is not really explicable in, like, words), GoodNews and how things really are (‘Bad, man. But there’s hope, you know? Once you know where to find it’) GoodNews and his healing hands: Molly wants him to warm them up there and then, on the spot, but David tells her that it’s not a party trick.

  ‘Have you always been able to do it? Could you do it when you were my age?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t do it till I was, like, twenty-five?’

  ‘How old are you now?’

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  ‘So how did you know you could do it, then?’ This from Tom, who has remained oblivious to the GoodNews charm.

  ‘My girlfriend at the time – she had a cricked neck and she asked me to give her a massage and . . . everything went all weird.’

  ‘What sort of weird?’

  ‘Weird weird. The lightbulbs
got brighter, the room got hot. It was a real scene.’

  ‘And how do you think your gift came about?’ There is, I am pleased to note, less vinegar in my voice. I’m learning. I’m still not a very good white wine, but I’m drinkable – you could put me in a punch, anyway.

  ‘I know, but I can’t tell you in front of the kids. Bad form.’

  I have no idea what this means, but if GoodNews thinks that the story of how he became a healer is unsuitable for minors, I am not prepared to argue with him, even if the minors are.

  ‘Oh, go on,’ Tom says.

  ‘No,’ says GoodNews. ‘I mean it. Ask me another question.’

  ‘What was your girlfriend’s name?’ Molly asks.

  ‘That’s a stupid question,’ Tom snorts. ‘Who wants to know that? Idiot.’

  ‘Hey, Tom, man. If that information is important to someone, then who are we to judge?’ says GoodNews. ‘There might be all sorts of reasons why Molly wanted to know what my girlfriend’s name was. Probably some pretty good reasons, if I know Molly. So let’s not be calling people idiots, eh? She was called Andrea, Molly.’

  Molly nods smugly, Tom’s face becomes a picture of smouldering hate – the kind of picture that a newspaper could use to illustrate an article on ethnic division in the former Yugoslavia – and I know that DJ GoodNews has made himself an enemy.

  For the rest of the meal, we manage to avoid flashpoints; GoodNews asks politely about our jobs and our schools and our maths teachers, and we all answer politely (if, in some cases, tersely), and we pass the time in this way until the last mouthful has been eaten and it is time to clear away.

  ‘I’ll wash up,’ says GoodNews.

  ‘We have a dishwasher,’ I tell him, and GoodNews looks anxiously at David. It is not difficult to anticipate what is coming, and so I do.

  ‘You don’t hold with dishwashers,’ I say, with a weariness exaggerated to convey the idea that GoodNews’s various antipathies might at some point become grating.

  ‘No,’ says GoodNews.

  ‘You don’t hold with a lot of things that a lot of people don’t have a problem with,’ I observe.

  ‘No,’ he agrees. ‘But just because a lot of people don’t have a problem with something, it doesn’t mean they’re right, does it? I mean, a lot of people used to think that . . . I don’t know . . . slavery was OK, but, you know. They were wrong, weren’t they? They were so wrong it was unreal. Because it wasn’t OK, was it? It was really bad, man. Slaves. No way.’

  ‘Do you think that slavery and dishwashers are the same thing, GoodNews? Or not quite the same, really?’

  ‘Maybe to me they’re the same thing.’

  ‘Maybe to you all sorts of things are the same thing. Maybe paedophilia is the same thing as . . . as . . . soap. Maybe fascism is the same thing as toilets. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to make my children pee in the garden, just because your peculiar moral code would prefer it.’ Maybe fascism is the same thing as toilets . . . I really said that, just now. This is the world I suddenly inhabit, a world where this might pass for a coherent line of argument.

  ‘You’re being silly. And sarcastic,’ David says.

  Sarcasm – my terrible indulgence. ‘Oh, so it’s me being silly, is it? Not the man who won’t sleep on a bed because it’s not, like, real?’ I feel bad. I should be able to handle the slavery versus dishwashers argument without recourse to childish insult.

  ‘I try to survive without things that not everybody has,’ says GoodNews. ‘I’m not joining in until everyone’s got everything. When, like, the last peasant in the Brazilian rainforest has a dishwasher, or a, you know, like, a cappuccino maker, or one of those TVs that’s the size of a house, then count me in, yeah? But until then, I’m making a stand.’

  ‘That’s very noble of you,’ I say. Nutter, I think, with an enormous sense of relief. There is, after all, nothing to learn from this person, no way he can make me feel small or wrong or ignoble or self-indulgent: he is simply a crank, and I can ignore him with impunity.

  ‘Everybody in the world’s got a dishwasher,’ Molly says, clearly puzzled, and all the times I feel I have failed as a mother are as nothing compared to this one, humiliating moment.

  ‘That’s not true, Molly,’ I say quickly and sharply. ‘And you know it.’

  ‘Who hasn’t, then?’ She’s not being cheeky. She just can’t think of anyone.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I say, but I’m just buying myself time while I dredge up someone in her universe who does their own washing-up. ‘What about Danny and Charlotte?’ Danny and Charlotte go to Molly’s school and live in a council flat down the road, and even as I speak I realize I am guilty of the most ludicrous form of class stereotyping.

  ‘They’ve got everything,’ says Molly.

  ‘They’ve got DVD and OnDigital,’ says Tom.

  ‘OK, OK. What about the children Daddy gave Tom’s computer to?’

  ‘They don’t count,’ says Molly. ‘They’ve got nothing. They haven’t even got homes. And I don’t know any of them. I wouldn’t want to know them, thank you very much, because they sound a bit too rough for my liking. Even though I feel sorry for them and I’m happy they’ve got Tom’s computer.’

  This is my daughter?

  The moral education of my children has always been important to me. I have talked to them about the Health Service, and about the importance of Nelson Mandela; we’ve discussed the homeless, of course, and racism, and sexism, and poverty, and money, and fairness. David and I have explained, as best we can, why anyone who votes Conservative will never be entirely welcome in our house, although we have to make special arrangements for Granny and Grandpa. And though I was sickened by Molly’s unctuous performance during the computer and lasagne episodes, there was a part of me that thought, yes, she’s coming along, she gets it, all those conversations and questions have not been in vain. Now I see that she’s a stinking patrician Lady Bountiful who in twenty years’ time will be sitting on the committee of some revolting charity ball in Warwickshire, moaning about refugees and giving her unwanted pashminas to her cleaning lady.

  ‘You see,’ says GoodNews. ‘This is why I don’t want to play the game. The possessions game. Because I think people become lazy and spoiled and uncaring.’

  I look at my lazy and uncaring and spoiled daughter, and then I tell GoodNews that my children would love to help him with the dishes.

  7

  I have about twelve hundred patients. There are some patients that I see a lot, and some I hardly see at all, and there are some I can help, and some I can’t, and the patients that distress me the most are the ones I see a lot who I can’t help. We call them heartsink patients, for obvious reasons, and someone once reckoned that most partners in a practice have about fifty heartsinks on their books. They come in, and sit down, and they look at me, and both of us know it’s hopeless, and I feel guilty and sad and fraudulent, and, if the truth be told, a little persecuted. These people don’t see anyone else who can’t help them, who fail them on such a regular basis. The TV repairman who can’t fix your picture, the plumber who can’t stop a leak, the electrician who can’t get your lights back on . . . Your relationship with these people ceases, after a while, because they cannot do anything for you. But my relationship with my heartsinks will never cease. They will sit and stare accusingly at me for ever.

  I know and, I hope, Mrs Cortenza knows that I cannot do anything for her. Her joints hurt, her back hurts, she cannot sleep with the pain, and the painkillers no longer seem to do anything for her, and she comes back again and again and we talk and talk and I think and think and come up with nothing that works (and in the process I spend and spend and spend, on drugs and X-rays and exploratory operations), and now I just wish that she would go to see another doctor and leave me alone, leave me to treat people I feel I have a chance with. Hopeful people, younger people, because Mrs Cortenza is old, older even than her seventy-three years, and it is her age and a lifetime spent cleaning oth
er people’s houses that have damaged her. (Let’s face it: these houses belong to people like me, so there is a peculiar circularity in all this. Maybe if we all forgot about being good and saving the world, and stayed at home and cleaned our own houses, then people like Mrs Cortenza wouldn’t need doctors. Maybe Mrs Cortenza, thus liberated from her pain and her domestic drudgery, could have got on with something socially useful. Maybe she would have spent her life teaching adult literacy, or working with teenage runaways, if I hadn’t been so hellbent on curing her, and thus never having time to scrub my own floors.)

  The morning after GoodNews’s arrival Mrs Cortenza shuffles in, grey with age and effort, and slumps into the chair, and shakes her head, and my heart does what it is supposed to do. We are silent for a couple of minutes while she recovers her breath; during this silence she points at the picture of Molly and Tom that I have pinned to the noticeboard, and then points at me, and I smile and nod, and she smiles and makes a thumbs-up sign and a gesture with her hand to indicate how big they are. I am sure that the same thought then seizes both of us: they didn’t use to be big when she first started coming to see me. The photo on the noticeboard probably depicted a couple of toddlers, and thus my children serve only to emphasize my uselessness.

  ‘How are you, Mrs Cortenza?’ I say, when the wheezing has subsided sufficiently to make conversation seem feasible. She shakes her head. She is not good.

  I look at my notes. ‘How were the pills I gave you last time?’ She shakes her head again. They were not good.

  ‘And are you sleeping?’ She is not sleeping. Her sleep is not good. Nothing is good. I look at her for as long as I can without embarrassment, and then stare at my notes intently, as if there might be something in them that will solve not only Mrs Cortenza’s problems, but the problems of all the world.

  And suddenly I realize that at home I have something which has worked for somebody, and if I am any kind of a doctor then I am compelled to try it. I call David, and ask him to bring GoodNews down to the surgery.