The Laying on of Hands: Stories

  House dark when I got in. I imagine they’re in the sitting room, the pair of them only I call out and there’s no sound. So I get my tea and read the Evening Post, nice to have the place to myself for a change.

  Then I go into the sitting room and there’s Bernard sitting there in the dark. I put the light on and he’s got the atlas open. I said, ‘What are you doing in the dark?’ He said, ‘Looking up the Maldive Islands.’ ‘Why,’ I said, ‘you’re not going on holiday?’ He said, ‘No, I’m not. How can I go on bloody holiday? What with?’ And he shoves a bank statement at me.

  I’ve a feeling he’s been crying and I’m not sure where to put myself so I go put the kettle on while I look at his statement. There’s practically nothing in it, money taken out nearly every day. I said, ‘What’s this?’ He said, ‘It’s that tart from Hobart.’ I said, ‘Miss Molloy? But she’s a qualified physiotherapist.’ He said, ‘Yes and she’s something else … she’s a—what do you call it—female dog.’

  I said, ‘Did you sign these cheques?’ He said, ‘Of course I signed them.’ I said, ‘What were you doing, practising writing?’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Where is she?’ He said, ‘The Maldive Islands, where I was going to be.’ I said, ‘Well we must contact the police. It’s fraud is this.’ He said, ‘No it isn’t.’ I said, ‘What did you think these cheques were for?’ He said, ‘I knew what they were for. For services rendered. And I don’t mean lifting me on and off the what’s it called. It’s stuff she did for me.’ I said, ‘What stuff?’ He said, ‘You know.’

  I said, ‘Remember what Mr Clarkson-Hall says, Bernard. Trace a path round the word.’ He said, ‘I don’t have to trace a path round the bloody word. I know the word. It’s you that doesn’t. You don’t know bloody nothing.’ I said, ‘Well one thing is plain. Despite your cerebral accident your capacity for foul language remains unimpaired.’ He said, ‘You’re right. It bloody does.’

  I made him some tea. I said, ‘She’s made a fool of you.’ Bernard said, ‘You can speak.’ I said. ‘You mean talk. I know I can speak. The expression is, you can talk. Anyway why?’ He said, ‘Monkeying about with your foot feller.’ I said, ‘Mr Dunderdale? What’s he got to do with it?’ He said, ‘Little games and whatnot. He’s obviously a … a …’ I said, ‘A what?’ He said, ‘A … thing.’ I said, ‘Skirt a path round the word, Bernard. A what?’ He said, ‘Skirt it yourself you stupid … four legs, two horns, where you get milk.’ I said, ‘Cow. You normally remember that.’

  I was telling Joy Poyser about it and she said, ‘Well, why did you tell him about the chiropodist?’ I said, ‘Mr Clarkson-Hall said that I should talk to him, it’s part of the therapy.’ She said, ‘It’s not part of the therapy for Estelle Metcalf, is it? You told her. She’s not had a stroke.’ Apparently she’s spread it all over the store.

  Anyway I came upstairs, left him crying over the atlas, when suddenly I hear a crash. I said, ‘Bernard? Bernard?’

  ‘BERNARD!’

  ESTELLE VENTURED into Soft Furnishings yesterday, first time for a week. Testing the water, I suppose. Said Neville was taking part in the battle of Marston Moor on Sunday. She’s going along as a camp follower but they’re short of one or two dishevelled Roundhead matrons and was I interested? I said, ‘It’s kind of you to offer, Estelle, but I think from now I’d be well advised to keep a low profile.’

  People don’t like to think you have a proper life, that’s what I’ve decided. Or any more of a life than they know about. Then when they find out they think it’s shocking. Else funny. I never thought I had a life. It was always Bernard who had the life.

  He’s worse this time than the last. Eyes used to follow you then. Not now. Log. Same rigmarole, though. Talk to him. Treat him like a person. Not that he ever treated me like a person. Meanwhile Madam is laid out on the beach in the Maldives. He was on the rug when I found him. Two inches the other way and he’d have hit his head on the fender. Lucky escape.

  I’d written to Mr Dunderdale, cancelling any further appointments. I didn’t say why, just that with Bernard being poorly again it wasn’t practical anyway. Which it wasn’t.

  So it was back to normal, sitting with Bernard, doing a few little jobs. I’d forgotten how long an evening could be.

  Anyway, I was coming away from work one night and a big browny-coloured car draws up beside me, the window comes down and blow me if it isn’t Mr Dunderdale.

  He said, ‘Good evening, Miss Fozzard. Could I tempt you up to Lawnswood? I’d like a little chat.’ I said, ‘Could we not talk here?’ He said, ‘Not in the way I’d like. I’m on a double yellow line.’ So I get in and he runs me up there and whatever else you can say about him he’s a very accomplished driver.

  Anyway he sits me down in his study and gives me a glass of sherry and says why did I not want to come and see him any more. Well, I didn’t know what to say. I said, ‘It isn’t as if I don’t look forward to my appointments.’ He said, ‘Well, dear lady, I look forward to them too.’ I said, ‘But now that I have to get help in for Bernard again I can’t afford to pay you.’

  He said, ‘Well, may I make a suggestion? Why don’t we reverse the arrangement?’ I said, ‘Come again.’ He said, ‘Do it vice versa. I pay you.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s very unusual.’ He said, ‘You’re a very unusual woman.’ I said, ‘I am? Why?’ He said, ‘Because you’re a free spirit, Miss Fozzard. You make your own rules.’ I said, ‘Well, I like to think so.’ He said, ‘I’m the same. We’re two of a kind, you and I, Miss Fozzard. Mavericks. Have you ever had any champagne?’ I said, ‘No, but I’ve seen it at the conclusion of motor races.’ He said, ‘Allow me. To the future?’

  It’s all very decorous. Quite often he’ll make us a hot drink and we’ll just sit and turn over the pages of one of his many books on the subject, or converse on matters related. I remarked the other day how I’d read that Imelda Marcos had a lot of shoes. He said, ‘She did … and she suffered for it at the bar of world opinion, in my view, Miss Fozzard, unjustly.’

  Little envelope on the hall table as I go out, never mentioned, and if there’s been anything beyond the call of duty there’ll be that little bit extra. Buys me no end of shoes, footwear generally. I keep thinking where’s it all going to end but we’ll walk that plank when we come to it.

  I’ve never had the knack of making things happen. I thought things happened or they didn’t. Which is to say they didn’t. Only now they have … sort of.

  Bernard gets an attendance allowance now and what with that and the envelopes from Mr Dunderdale I can stay on at work and still have someone in to look after him. Man this time. Mr Albright. Pensioner, so he’s glad of a job. Classy little feller, keen on railways and reckons to be instigating Bernard into the mysteries of chess. Though Mr Albright has to play both sides of course.

  At one point I said to Mr Dunderdale, ‘People might think this rather peculiar particularly in Lawnswood.’ He said, ‘Well, people would be wrong. We are just enthusiasts, Miss Fozzard, you and I and there’s not enough enthusiasm in the world these days. Now if those Wellingtons are comfy I just want you in your own time and as slowly as you like very gently to mark time on my bottom.’

  Occasionally he’ll have some music on. I said once, ‘I suppose that makes this the same as aerobics.’ He said, ‘If you like.’

  It’s droll but the only casualty in all this is my feet, because nowadays the actual chiropody gets pushed to one side a bit. If I want an MOT I really have to nail him down.

  We’re still Mr Dunderdale and Miss Fozzard and I’ve not said anything to anybody at work. Learned my lesson there.

  Anyway, people keep saying how well I look.

  I SUPPOSE THERE’S A WORD for what I’m doing but … I skirt round it.

  Father! Father! Burning Bright

  On the many occasions Midgley had killed his father, death had always come easily. He died promptly, painlessly and without a struggle. Looking back, Midgley could see that even in these imagined deaths he had f
ailed his father. It was not like him to die like that. Nor did he.

  The timing was good, Midgley acknowledged that. Only his father would have managed to stage his farewell in the middle of a ‘Meet The Parents’ week. It was not a function Midgley enjoyed. Each year he was dismayed how young the parents had grown, the youth of fathers in particular. Most sported at least one tattoo, with ears and noses now routinely studded. Midgley saw where so many of his pupils got it from. One father wore a swastika necklace, of the sort Midgley had wondered if he felt justified in confiscating from a boy. And a mother he had talked to had had green hair. ‘Not just green,’ muttered Miss Tunstall, ‘bright green. And then you wonder the girls get pregnant.’

  That was the real point of these get-togethers. The teachers were appalled by the parents but found their shortcomings reassuring. With parents like these, they reasoned, who could blame the schools? The parents, recalling their own teachers as figures of dignity and authority, found the staff sloppy. Awe never entered into it, apparently. ‘Too human by half’ was their verdict. So both Nature and Nurture came away, if not satisfied, at any rate absolved. ‘Do you wonder?’ said the teachers, looking at the parents. ‘They get it at school,’ said the parents.

  ‘Coretta’s bin havin’ these massive monthlies. Believe me, Mr Midgley, I en never seen menstruatin’ like it.’ Mrs Azakwale was explaining her daughter’s poor showing in Use of English. ‘She bin wadin’ about in blood to her ankles, Mr Midgley. I en never out of the launderette.’ Behind Mrs Azakwale, Mr Horsfall listened openly and with unconcealed scepticism, shaking his head slowly as Midgley caught his eye. Behind Mr Horsfall, Mr Patel beamed with embarrassment as the large black woman said these terrible things so loudly. And beyond Mr Patel, Midgley saw the chairs were empty.

  Mrs Azakwale took Coretta’s bloodstained trackrecord over to the queue marked Computer Sciences, leaving Midgley faced with Mr Horsfall and Martin.

  Mr Horsfall did not dye his hair nor wear an earring. His hair was now fashionably short but only because he had never got round to wearing it fashionably long. Nor had his son Martin ever ventured under the drier; his ears, too, were intact. Mr Horsfall was a detective sergeant.

  ‘I teach Martin English, Mr Horsfall,’ said Midgley, wishing he had not written ‘Hopeless’ on Martin’s report, a document now gripped by Mr Horsfall in his terrible policeman’s hand.

  ‘Martin? Is that what you call him?’

  ‘But that’s his name.’ Midgley had a moment of wild anxiety that it wasn’t, that the father would accuse him of not even knowing the name of his son.

  ‘His name’s Horsfall. Martin is what we call him, his mother and me. For your purposes I should have thought his name was Horsfall. Are you married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Horsfall was not impressed. He had spent long vigils in public toilets as a young constable. Many of the patrons had turned out to be married and some of them teachers. Marriage involved no medical examination, no questionnaire to speak of. Marriage for these people was just the bush they hid behind.

  ‘What does my son call you?’

  ‘He calls me Mr Midgley.’

  ‘Doesn’t he call you sir?’

  ‘On occasion.’

  ‘Schools …’ Horsfall sniffed.

  His son ought to have been small, nervous and bright, Midgley the understanding schoolteacher taking his part against his big, overbearing parent. He would have put books into his hands, watched him flower so that in time to come the boy would look back and think ‘Had it not been for him …’ Such myths sustained Midgley when he woke in the small hours of the morning and drowsed during the middle period of the afternoon. But they were myths. Martin was large and dull. He was not unhappy. He would not flower. He was not even embarrassed. He was probably on his father’s side, thought Midgley, as he sat there looking at his large inherited hands, and occasionally picked at one of a scattering of violetpainted warts.

  ‘What worries me,’ said Horsfall, ‘is that he can scarcely put two words together.’

  This was particularly hurtful to a man who, in his professional capacity, specialised in converting the faltering confessions of semi-illiterates into his plain policeman’s prose. He could do it. At four o’clock in the morning after a day spent combing copses and dragging ponds, never mind house-to-house enquiries, he could do it. Why not his son?

  ‘You show me up, Martin, having to come along here. I don’t grudge coming along here. But what I would like to have come along here as is a proud father. To be told of your achievements. Be shown your name in gilt letters on the honours board. Martin Horsfall. But no. What is it? It’s Geography: Poor. History: Poor. English: Hopeless. PE: Only fair. Why Martin?’

  ‘Why Mr Midgley? And why hopeless? Geography: Poor. History: Poor. English: Hopeless. Is he hopeless or are you?’

  ‘He doesn’t try.’

  ‘Do you challenge him? We challenge him at home. His mother and I challenge him. Does he get challenged at school? I don’t see it.’ Horsfall looked round but caught the eye of Mr Patel, who was smiling in anticipation of his interview. Mr Patel’s son was clever. Blacks, Indians. That was why. Challenge. How could there be any challenge?

  ‘I never had chances like he had. And I dare say you didn’t. We never had chances like that, Martin.’

  At the ‘we’ Midgley flinched, suddenly finding himself handcuffed to Horsfall in the same personal pronoun.

  ‘A school like this. Modern buildings. Light. Air. Sporting facilities tip-top. Volleyball. If somebody had come up to me when I was your age and said “There are facilities for volleyball”, I would have gone down on my knees. What do you say?’

  The question Horsfall was asking his son had no obvious answer. Indeed, it was not really a question at all. ‘Justify your life’; that was what this dull and dirty youth was being asked to do. Not seeing that justification was necessary, the son was silent and the father waited.

  And it was in the middle of this silence that Miss Tunstall came up to say the hospital had telephoned. Except that, sensing this was not simply a silence but an essential part of what was being said, she did not immediately interrupt but made little wavings with her hand behind Mr Horsfall’s head, who—a policeman and ever on the watch for mockery—turned round. So it was to him that Miss Tunstall gave the bad news (a man in any case used to transactions with ambulances, hospitals and all the regimes of crisis).

  ‘The hospital’s just rung. Mr Midgley’s father’s been taken ill.’ And only then, having delivered her message did she look at Midgley, who thus heard his father was dying at second-hand and then only as a kind of apology.

  ‘They’re ringing the ward,’ said Midgley. ‘It’s a fall, apparently.’ One ear was in Miss Tunstall’s office, the other fifty miles away in some nowhere behind a switchboard.

  ‘You want to pray it’s not his hip,’ said Miss Tunstall.

  ‘That’s generally the weak spot.’ She had a mother of her own. ‘The pelvis heals in no time, surprisingly.’ She did not sound surprised. Her mother had broken her pelvis and she had thought it was the beginning of the end. ‘No. It’s when it’s the hip it’s complicated.’

  ‘Switchboard’s on the blink,’ said a voice.

  ‘Join the club,’ said another. ‘I’ve been on the blink all day.’

  ‘It’s the dreaded lurgi,’ said the first voice.

  ‘Hello,’ said Midgley. But there was silence.

  ‘She took a nasty tumble in Safeway’s last week,’ went on Miss Tunstall. ‘They do when they get older. It’s what you must expect.’ She expected it all the time. ‘Their bones get brittle.’

  She cracked her fingers and adjusted the spacing.

  ‘Maintenance,’ said a new voice.

  ‘I’ve been wrongly connected,’ said Midgley.

  ‘It’s these ancillary workers,’ said Miss Tunstall. ‘Holding the country to ransom. Other people’s suffering is their bread and butter.’ She was wanting to get on
with a notice about some boys acting the goat in the swimming baths but felt she ought to wait until Midgley had heard one way or the other. Her mother was 82. The last twenty years had not been easy and had she known what was in store she thought now she would probably have stabbed her mother to death the second she turned 60. These days it would only have meant a suspended sentence or if the worst came to the worst open prison. Miss Tunstall had once been round such an institution with the school and found it not uncongenial. A picnic in fact.

  ‘Records are on the warpath again,’ said a voice in Midgley’s ear.

  ‘It never rains,’ said another.

  ‘Should I be sterilisin’ this?’ said a black voice.

  ‘Search me, dear,’ said an emancipated one.

  ‘Hello,’ said Midgley. ‘HELLO.’

  Softly Miss Tunstall began to type.

  Midgley thought of his father lying in bed, dying but not wanting to be any trouble.

  ‘No joy?’ said Miss Tunstall, uncertain whether it would be better to underline ‘the likelihood of a serious accident’. ‘And then they wonder why people are stampeding to BUPA.’

  Midgley decided he had been forgotten then a crisp voice suddenly said ‘Sister Tudor’.

  ‘I’m calling about a patient, a Mr Midgley.’

  Noiselessly Miss Tunstall added an exclamation mark to ‘This hooliganism must now STOP!’ and waited, her hands spread over the keys.

  ‘What is the patient’s name?’

  ‘Midgley,’ said Midgley. ‘He came in this morning.’

  ‘When was he admitted?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘Midgley.’ There was a pause. ‘We have no Midgley. No Midgley has been admitted here. Are you sure you have the right ward?’