Meanwhile Mrs Donaldson sipped her tea and ate a chocolate digestive biscuit and by the time they reached a second tempestuous conclusion she had had three and their tea was cold.
‘I hope I didn’t spoil your fun,’ said Mrs Donaldson as Andy pulled on his jeans.
‘No way,’ he said and put his hand on her bum. ‘If anything you added to it.’
Reflecting on the episode, which in the succeeding days she did a good deal, Mrs Donaldson decided that watching the young people make love was the nearest she had ever come to a deed.
True she hadn’t been the one to suggest it and had only acquiesced and she wasn’t sure that acquiescence was a deed. Marriage was meant to be a deed, for instance, and she had acquiesced in that though in retrospect it had turned out no more a deed than taking shelter from the rain.
Deeds came easier to some people than others, she thought, almost effortlessly to some. She would have to try harder.
Seldom having had much of a secret before and never one of such intimacy, Mrs Donaldson was surprised at how strong the impulse was to share it, or at least to share the secret that she had one to share. She longed to tell Delia about the goings-on with her lodgers while at the same time knowing there could be no question of it and no hint ever. She was sensible enough to realise it was not an incident the couple themselves were likely to broadcast, the presence of such a middle-aged and respectable third party hardly a turn-on or an episode to boast about. Still, having a secret put her in a good mood, sheathing her against the petty annoyances at the hospital, the flirting of Ballantyne, the bullying of her daughter. Hectic though the evening had been for Mrs Donaldson in retrospect it constituted some sort of refuge, a haven utterly set apart, a place of her own.
‘What are you looking so happy about?’ said Delia in the canteen. ‘Have the lodgers paid the rent?’
‘They have as a matter of fact,’ said Mrs Donaldson. ‘We’re bang up to date.’
‘Is that what’s bought the frock?’
‘This?’ said Mrs Donaldson. ‘No. I’ve had this for ages. Just thought I’d give it an outing.’
‘And a hairdo as well. Not to mention the lipstick. Jane, I think you’ve turned a corner.’
‘No, no,’ said Mrs Donaldson. ‘You don’t understand. It’s work. I’m in drag.’
Parfitt, a sandy-haired spindly young man, was sitting at the table on the rostrum. Mrs Donaldson knocked.
‘Come,’ said Parfitt, who had heard this trope on the telly.
‘Nice if you got up,’ said Ballantyne from the back. ‘Gentlemen do. And doctors are gentlemen. Or used to be.’
Parfitt gave Mrs Donaldson a chair and she sat down heavily with her legs apart and arms folded. She blew her nose on a large spotted handkerchief and said her name was Dewhirst.
‘And your first name?’ said Parfitt, pen poised.
‘Geoffrey.’
‘Geoffrey?’
‘Yes,’ said Dewhirst, ‘with a G.’
Parfitt looked wild-eyed at the class hoping someone would help. No one did.
‘We’re waiting,’ said Ballantyne. ‘The patient doesn’t have all day.’
Parfitt consulted his form.
‘Have you always been called Geoffrey?’
‘Yes,’ said Dewhirst. ‘Why?’
‘It’s an unusual name for a woman.’
‘I’m not a woman.’
‘Oh,’ said Parfitt, sensing firmer ground. ‘You’re very convincing.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I would never have guessed.’ Parfitt’s manner was now kindly and professional.
‘Is it a problem?’
‘Not for me.’
‘It’s just that…’ Parfitt pressed his hands together, ‘I have to ask these things, get them straight.’
Somebody hooted, silenced by a glare from Ballantyne.
‘Could I ask you something?’
‘You’re the doctor.’
‘You’ve changed your appearance, gone to all this trouble, so why haven’t you changed your name?’
‘Why should I?’ said Dewhirst. ‘I’m not a woman. I’m a man.’
‘So you’ve never had surgery?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘What did they do?’
‘Cut me open. I had appendicitis.’
‘I meant for your problem.’
‘It’s not a problem.’
‘Oh,’ Parfitt considered. ‘So that’s not what you’ve come about?’
‘No. I’ve come about my knee.’
‘Your knee!’ Parfitt beamed. He knew about knees. Never had a knee been more welcome.
‘Which knee is it? Shall we take a look.’
‘Don’t let’s bother,’ said Ballantyne. ‘The knee is hardly the point.’
In the circumstances he was quite kind.
‘We had to go all round the houses but we got there in the end.’
‘I’d have known,’ said Parfitt plaintively, ‘only she doesn’t look like a man.’
‘Well,’ said Ballantyne, ‘we don’t know what he is, do we? We only have his/her word for it.’
Parfitt still couldn’t get it right.
‘You mean I should have examined her?’
‘No,’ said Ballantyne patiently. ‘You should have examined the knee.’
He came to the front and sat down. ‘What you have to remember is that these days gender is in flux. The patient may be a transvestite, a transsexual or a transient on a park bench. It is no matter. How they are dressed, how they look is of no clinical concern. The patient,’ he smiled at Mrs Donaldson, ‘may smell. His or her body may stink. That is not your concern either. If you want bodies that don’t stink go in for surgery where they wash the patient first.’
He sat on the desk between Parfitt and the putative Dewhirst who was wondering if this performance was at least partly for her.
‘Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as they come. Remember, too, that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom. You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.’
Ballantyne sat on the edge of the desk swinging his legs, now slightly sheepish. Tucked in at the end of the day and coming from a dispassionate and even sardonic instructor, to the class this sermon was unexpected and even inspirational. Just to be called a physician seemed a step up. It made the students think more of themselves than Ballantyne generally allowed them to do and some of them at least were reminded that this was not just a job but a calling.
Parfitt, though, was not one of them.
‘Should I look at the knee?’
Ballantyne sighed. ‘I think you should leave Dewhirst’s knee well alone lest he/she take you over it and give you a good smack. Thank you, Mrs Donaldson. Another Oscar-winning performance.’
‘You get all the juicy ones,’ said Delia. ‘I could have done him only what do I get…endogenous depression and no wonder.’
With her thoughts now never far from the session in the bedroom Mrs Donaldson wondered whether she owed her boldness (even if it had only been boldness in acquiescence) to the exercises in not being herself that she went through in the classroom. Without them she might have been less receptive to what was after all quite an outrageous proposal. Even so she had come close to dismissing the idea because ‘she wasn’t that kind of person’. But what kind of person was she? She was now no longer sure.
In retrospect she could see that the classes at the medical school, constrained though they generally were, had constituted some kind of preparation, a softening-up for what was to come and an unlooked-for initiation into candour even though the candour was put on and was not candour at all. She was playing a part both at home and at work, she was quite candid about that. She was learning to pretend whereas previ
ously (when her husband was alive) the closest she got to pretence was politeness. Until now pretence with her had never been, as they said nowadays, proactive.
Having displayed themselves so unreservedly in the bedroom it wasn’t surprising that the young couple and Andy in particular were more relaxed around the house. He was often without his shirt and occasionally his jeans and though Laura was more modest neither of them felt in the least inhibited.
Mrs Donaldson liked this as it made it seem more like home (though not one she had ever had) until came the day when Gwen called unexpectedly to find Andy making himself some toast in the kitchen, and having that minute left Laura in bed, just in his underpants.
‘I didn’t know where to put myself,’ she said to her mother, ‘whereas he seemed to think it was perfectly normal. Took his bread and jam, said “Cheers” and went upstairs. Does she do the same? Parade about half-naked? Just some skinny little pants. I thought they’d gone out, pants like that. Our Justin doesn’t wear them any more. Justin’s gone back to boxers.’ Justin being about as unbecoming as his mother, this wasn’t a thought Mrs Donaldson wanted to dwell on.
‘They live here,’ she said apologetically.
‘Correction,’ said her daughter, ‘they lodge here. I blame that hospital. Since you’ve started going there you’ve got really…lax.’
‘Lax?’ said her mother.
‘I don’t know what Daddy would think. You used to be so shy.’
‘At least they don’t play music,’ said Mrs Donaldson. ‘If they played music there might be something to complain about.’
‘It seems to me’, said Gwen, ‘you’d be quite in order making it a rule that whatever they do in the bedroom they keep their clothes on in the house.’
‘A dress code, do you mean? They live here.’
‘So do you.’
‘They’re company,’ said her mother.
‘How can they be company? They’re eighteen.’ They were actually twenty, but Mrs Donaldson didn’t think there was any point in saying so.
Other than this loosening of the proprieties where the lodgers were concerned nothing much changed. And of course the loosening was one-sided. Laura might slip downstairs in the minimum of clothing but not Mrs Donaldson. She understood instinctively that for her appearances must be rigidly maintained. She must be her age.
Since working at the medical school she had ceased to be intimidated by the young or, her lodgers apart, even to be interested in them much. Some were appealing, she could see that, but fishing for a diagnosis or floundering over her body they were too soft-shelled to make much of an impression.
In less vulnerable moments (i.e. when Ballantyne wasn’t around) they were friendly enough, treating her she decided rather like their granny as ‘a bit of a sport’ (her word) or ‘cool’ (theirs) but never without a degree of condescension. Like the artist’s model that daughter Gwen had identified her with, she was both there and not there, a frame on which to hang symptoms.
Dr Ballantyne put Mr Maloney in the picture.
‘This is Mrs Dickinson. She has come to see her GP not for the first time about some recurrent eczema. Previous visits have not succeeded in uncovering any particular cause; all the usual remedies have been prescribed but the eczema always returns. Her GP has now begun to wonder if there is an underlying psychological cause, the eczema a symptom of a deeper malaise. Which is for you to uncover.’
Maloney nodded sagely.
‘Good hunting.’
Dr Ballantyne laid a caring hand on Mrs Dickinson’s supposedly itching and weeping arm before giving them both a wide smile and loping off to another cubicle.
‘I hate these mental jobs,’ said Maloney and put one foot on the table. ‘You never know where you are with them. Give me an old-fashioned tumour any day.’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Mrs Dickinson.
‘Oh come on, love. This psychosomatic stuff. So you’ve got eczema. Wrong soap. Wrong washing powder. Diet, I suppose, maybe…there’s generally a physical cause. But these days just for form’s sake we have to go down the psychological route.’
Maloney’s sights were set on surgery; all the rest was a waste of time. If eczema could be cut out on the operating table he’d have been interested.
‘So. What’s the story. How did she get it?’
‘How did I get it?’ the proto-patient primly corrected him.
Maloney sighed. This was one of the tiresome individuals who insisted on playing the game.
‘It’s not a spin-off from the menopause?’
‘I don’t believe I’ve had the menopause,’ said Mrs Dickinson.
‘Oh. So you’re still doing the rounds. Maybe that’s it?’
‘I’m not still “doing the rounds” as you put it. I’m happily married.’
‘Good for you. Hurray. Do you smoke?’
‘No. And cigarettes wouldn’t cause it anyway.’
‘I know that, dear, I just thought we could nip out and have one behind the bins.’
‘I’m in pain,’ said Mrs Dickinson. ‘I’m itching. My back is red raw.’
‘Yeah yeah,’ said Maloney.
‘Tell you what. Why don’t you give me the upshot of the case, the conclusion you’ve got written down in your brief and then we can cut the whole business short. After all, even if it is all in the mind it’s not going to make much difference. Nobody goes into dermatology, we all know that.’
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said the supposed Mrs Dickinson. ‘Perhaps we should get back to the case notes. And then you could ask me when this eczema first occurred.’
‘She made me go through the whole rigmarole, stupid bitch,’ said Maloney in the pub afterwards. ‘Why should she care? I thought she was the one who was supposed to be cool.’
RENT DAY WAS COMING UP AGAIN and Mrs Donaldson had been readying herself for the encounter. She had already decided that if a repeat performance was suggested she would feign reluctance on financial grounds before eventually giving in on the same terms as before. However on the Friday in question nothing was said until bedtime when Mrs Donaldson happened to be in the kitchen where Andy was making Laura a hot drink.
‘Oh before I forget,’ he said and brought out some £20 notes. ‘I think this covers it.’
Not sure how many notes there were and not wanting to count them there and then she just smiled and put them in her bag.
‘We’re improving,’ Andy said.
Mrs Donaldson left it a few minutes before she went upstairs and as she sat on her bed she thought she could hear them laughing.
Now she gets ready for bed, putting on her dressing gown and not for the first time takes one of the flimsy bedroom chairs from beside the bed and puts it by the dressing table. Perched on the chair and with a blanket round her shoulders and an eiderdown round her legs she presses her ear to the wall.
Somewhere on the other side of the city Ballantyne is keeping his own vigil, running and re-running the tape he had taken months ago on his camcorder. Whenever Mrs Donaldson appears he freezes the frame, wishing he had the technology or the know how to close in. Sometimes she looks directly at the camera and he feels she is looking at him and this is a small satisfaction. But mostly he just looks at her.
Mrs Donaldson’s adventure had given her something of a boost. Though her own attractions had not been at issue in the scene of which she had been a witness, in some undefinable way seeing it (and to that extent participating) meant that she partook of the charms of the love-making couple. She imagined herself younger, she looked brighter, and ludicrous though she knew it to be, she felt she was still in the game.
But not for long.
Mrs Donaldson was not vain. She had never thought she was all that much to look at while at the same time recognising that she was probably more attractive now than she had been when she was younger. She was not petite and quite sturdy in fact but she had good skin, nice crisp hair that she kept neat and well-curled, and it was not surprising (and she was not s
urprised) if she appealed to men of her own age…women too maybe but she had no means of knowing that nor had any inclination to find out.
Still, she was fifty-five, an age when should she take her clothes off full light was to be avoided, hotel bathrooms always dangerous places.
That the young people had not minded having her in their bedroom even from economic necessity meant a lot to her though had she had to participate, a wild speculation she these days entertained more and more, she would have been grateful for the candles. Fifty-five or not it had reassured her that she wasn’t wholly repellent to look at.
The daily proximity of youth made this illusion difficult to maintain. She had been experiencing palpitations and periodic dizziness and someone in the first year had been put up to listen to her chest. This involved a slight loosening of her clothing – no more than a button or two of her blouse – a procedure to which normally and unless specifically required to behave otherwise she remained indifferent. But he was a handsome boy who undid her buttons with practised ease and she watched him as he listened to her heart. He was looking, too, and she caught his slight but unmistakeable revulsion as he touched the age-puckered skin of her breast which, since he was a bright boy, he was able instantly to convert into a frown of concern.
It wasn’t quite quick enough to deceive Mrs Donaldson, though, who spotted it not as the patient but as herself and whereas she might ordinarily have taken some mild and wholly unacknowledged pleasure in his touch, now, looking at the unpuckered and slightly furred flesh of the young man’s ear a few inches from her face, she felt soiled and withered and wholly without value.
‘Good,’ said Ballantyne. ‘But what did Mr Adams do wrong?’ The boy looked suddenly crestfallen and Mrs Donaldson felt herself blushing. Ballantyne must have spotted his distaste too and now her carnal shortcomings were to become a means of instruction.
‘Come along. How did he mishandle the patient?’
Various suggestions came from the class, all of them rejected.
Ballantyne sighed.
‘Expert as I’m sure you are at undoing ladies’ buttons, Mr Adams, you should allow the patient to do that for herself. Unless the patient is incapable…and Mrs Donaldson is certainly not that. You don’t just go for it.’