Mrs Donaldson wasn’t feeling all that clever herself this morning and just before leaving the house she had been sick. She had taken a couple of tablets but now they were beginning to wear off and with Terry and Delia having been briskly disposed of she found herself lying on a trolley in a hospital gown with two students in attendance and not feeling at all well, even, she discovered as she felt her tummy, in actual pain.
Without warning Mrs Donaldson suddenly began to shiver uncontrollably and so violently she might have been attached to a machine.
‘That’s a “rigor”,’ said the girl.
‘How does she do it?’ said the boy. ‘It’s amazing. Look, she’s even sweating.’
‘No worries,’ said the girl. ‘She’s the crafty one apparently. Someone in the third year told me. Now dear,’ and she bent over the trolley, ‘what seems to be the trouble?’
‘I’m ill,’ said Mrs Donaldson, her teeth chattering. ‘I was sick this morning. Get help. Get Dr Ballantyne.’
‘All in good time. We’ll just examine you.’
The boy fumbled his way round.
‘Try and keep still if you can.’
He laid his hand on her abdomen and pressed at which she screamed out so suddenly he recoiled as if he’d been bitten.
‘Bloody hell. No need to overdo it.’
Mrs Donaldson had left her folder on the chair and thinking to cut short the process the girl sneaks a look at what this quite spectacular bundle of symptoms is meant to represent.
Light dawned.
‘No worries,’ she said. ‘It’s all psychosomatic,’ and suddenly she bawls in Mrs Donaldson’s ear, ‘You’ve not got cancer. This isn’t cancer.’
‘I’m so cold,’ whispered the patient. ‘Can I have a blanket? Get help.’
‘We are help,’ said the boy. ‘This is what she does apparently. She is brilliant.’ Shivering and shaking and with her belly on fire Mrs Donaldson dimly remembered she had had to present something like this once before and she feebly beckons the girl closer.
‘I think…I think it’s acute appendicitis.’
‘Really? Well that’s good. At least it isn’t cancer.’
‘Help me.’
‘Time’s getting on,’ said the boy. ‘I’m supposed to be on a ward round in five minutes. Knock it off now, love. We’ve got the message. Oh God, she’s pretending to be unconscious. Well, we’re going to leave you to it.’
The students head for the door but as they are going the girl comes back and whispers in Mrs Donaldson’s unconscious ear, ‘It isn’t cancer. Not cancer.’
Making his leisurely way back through the hospital Ballantyne ran into a distraught Delia who, thinking to collect her friend for coffee, had found her laid out on the trolley unconscious and unattended.
‘You’re a victim of your own reputation,’ said Ballantyne visiting her on the ward the next day. ‘But you were quite right. It was appendicitis. The rigor should have told them that, particularly when the pain was in the textbook spot. They’d no excuse.’
Ballantyne had had supper with Mrs Donaldson on several occasions but without ever touching her. Now, because she is or has been ill, he feels empowered to take her hand and stroke it therapeutically.
‘I blame myself. I should have been there. Still, it will do them no harm to have come that close to killing someone so early on in their careers. I made a lesson of it this morning and I said…’
Ballantyne having taken advantage of his position as doctor Mrs Donaldson now takes advantage of hers as patient and, seemingly weary, closes her eyes.
‘You’re tired,’ says Ballantyne, reluctantly releasing her hand and falling back into the traditional doctor-speak he was always mocking in his students. ‘Try and get some rest. We’ll soon have you out of here.’
Scarcely had he gone when a more enlivening visitor arrived in the person of Ollie bearing an eccentric posy from the garden consisting of two sweet peas, a dandelion, a sprig of privet and a pigeon’s feather, an assemblage which, having put it in her tooth glass, he proceeded to draw while sitting on the end of her bed. He took her hand, too, which made her glad he wasn’t with the listless Geraldine, who, unsurprisingly, had a thing about hospitals.
Ollie wanted to see her scar and was disappointed to find it was still hidden by dressings or he might have drawn that too.
‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Plenty of time for that,’ and promising to keep the house tidy, was off.
Gwen was her other visitor and though the full circumstances of the students’ negligence had been kept from her she renewed her efforts to get her mother to find employment elsewhere or, better still, abandon employment al together. This was in between floods of tears since, as she took pains to make clear, this visit was for her particularly poignant as she had not been in the hospital since her father died. She was explaining this to her mother, but, as she told her indifferent husband later, ‘Mother seemed very tired. Slept most of the time I was there. It reminds you she won’t always be with us.’
Back at home for a brief convalescence, to begin with Mrs Donaldson resisted the temptation to resume her nightly routine. After that first unsatisfactory evening it seemed unlikely that there would be a repeat performance and no necessity for it either as Ollie had paid the rent on time and in full.
Perhaps her brush with mortality ought to have turned her thoughts to worthier objects, but it hadn’t. What was putting her off was Geraldine. Her diffidence and the general drabness of her disposition displeased Mrs Donaldson if only because it tended to take the edge off her nocturnal vigils. Though still occasionally en poste she was now less conscientious about it, once knocking off in the middle of an encounter that gave no sign of coming to a conclusion and since she knew the conclusion was likely to be Geraldine’s melancholy, long withdrawing wail she felt she was better off in bed. Also, she told herself, she’d had an operation.
She reflected that what had briefly been almost suffocatingly exciting was now routine, as routine in fact as it had been when Mr Donaldson was alive and she was still a participant. She didn’t like to feel like this – it seemed a portent of age. Morality had nothing to do with it.
It meant though that any relief from her mural duties was welcome and when Geraldine had to go over to Halifax to stay with her sister Mrs Donaldson was glad to get back to an early bed and a nice read.
EARLIER THAT EVENING she and Dr Ballantyne, or Duncan as she was now licensed to call him, had been out to supper. He talked about his life and his career and when it got to the coffee stage he asked her to marry him.
She had been expecting this and while she could not give him an immediate reply she had an answer ready which was that, flattered and grateful though she was, this proposal had come as such a surprise she would like to think it over.
Emboldened by her ambiguous response and also remembering what he had been told of her goings-on with the lodgers he went a step further and placing his hand on the inside of her thigh suggested that it might help her towards a decision if they were to go to bed together.
This proposal too, was not unexpected, her first line of defence her not long-removed appendix and the presumed need to treat her recently perforated abdomen with some consideration. This he lengthily pooh-poohed delivering a long lecture on the body’s recuperative capacities and pointing out that in any event there were other intimacies short of penetration that would involve no pressure on the particular muscles in question.
This she had not foreseen but fell back on the quick thinking she had learned in the classes saying that she might have been persuaded had not today been a special day, citing it as the (entirely spurious) anniversary of her late husband’s death. If only out of respect for Cyril could their encounter be postponed…Duncan?
Duncan put his hand over hers. ‘If there was anything you could have said that might make me respect you more this is it. Of course we will wait. We must wait.’
It was a harmless lie but back at home and havi
ng an early bed she thought that were this a novel it might ultimately have found her out: should he ever mention it to Gwen her cover was blown.
She thought, too, about marriage. It would mean knuckling down. Marrying Mr Donaldson she’d had to knuckle down though there hadn’t been much to knuckle down from. Marriage to Dr Ballantyne would mean knuckling down, too…though this time there was more to lose.
She was reading her book and about to turn her light off when there was a gentle knock at the door.
It was Ollie, just in his T-shirt.
‘I was wondering if you wanted to come in.’
‘But Geraldine’s not here.’
‘Yeah, I know. She’s had to go over to Halifax. Her sister’s poorly. She may be there for a week or two.’
He waited.
‘What do you think?’
‘Besides,’ said Mrs Donaldson, ‘you’ve paid the rent. You paid it on Friday.’
‘Yeah. Missed a trick there. What do you think?’ She put her book down and took off her reading glasses.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Yeah? Why not?’
‘It’s just that I’m nearly at the end of this chapter. But if you just give me a minute or two, I’ll come in.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Donaldson, putting her glasses back on. ‘No problem.’
The Shielding of Mrs Forbes
LIKE MANY A HANDSOME MAN, Graham Forbes had chosen to marry someone not nearly as good looking as himself and even slightly older.
‘Chucked himself away if you ask me,’ his mother said. Which of course, he didn’t. ‘Waste, waste, waste. I’m his mother. I’m good looking. Naturally one assumed he’d marry someone along the same lines. We’ve always been so close.’
‘My chum’ she called him. ‘My young man’.
‘We told each other everything. Or I thought we did.’
Graham’s father having nothing to say, said nothing.
‘I feel such a fool putting the announcement in the paper. I mean, “Betty”.
‘What sort of a name is that? Margaret, yes. Joan, possibly. Though I must confess Caroline was the least I’d been hoping for. But Betty!’
As names one might think Betty and Graham nicely matched, both dull and unassertive and not committing their bearers to any particular stance on human affairs in the way that Tessa does, or Rory even. But this was partly the trouble. For, though she could never admit it, Graham’s mother blamed herself for calling him Graham in the first place. In the years since he was born her sights had risen and Graham was not nearly the classy name she’d once thought. She wished now that she could get rid of it as she had got rid of the dark oak dining suite that belonged to the same period. But though car-boot sales exist to dispose of discarded aspirations there are no stalls dealing in our most unwanted commodities like names, relatives or one’s own appearance in the glass.
‘I wouldn’t care,’ said Graham’s mother, ‘but her first name’s only the half of it. Look at her second name: Green. Betty Green. I wouldn’t put it past her to be Jewish. I’ve known Green to be a Jewish name.’
‘It’s actually Greene,’ said Graham’s father. ‘Like the novelist. There’s a silent “e”.’
Graham’s father was understandably sensitive to this spelling, being something of a silent he himself. Indeed his wife was often taken for a widow. She had so much the air of a woman who was coping magnificently that a husband still extant took people by surprise.
‘I believe he’s a Catholic.’
‘Who?’ said Graham’s mother.
‘Greene. The novelist. It comes up in his books from time to time.’
‘Oh,’ said his wife. ‘I wouldn’t want my son marrying a Catholic.’
For Graham’s mother there was little to choose between Jews and Catholics. The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and the Catholics had children in much the same way.
‘I suppose she could be a Catholic,’ said Graham’s father. ‘I could see her as a nun.’ The idea seemed to please him but it didn’t please his wife.
‘Just our luck she missed her vocation. I mean face facts, Edward. He’s very good looking; she isn’t. Marriage is supposed to be a partnership. Good-looking people marry good-looking people and the others take what’s left.’
‘There’s always love,’ said Mr Forbes lamely.
‘Love,’ snorted Mrs Forbes. ‘Of course there’s love. She’s in love with him, who wouldn’t be? But what does he see in her?’
‘She may have money.’
‘A hole in her cardigan and the same tights three days running? I’ve seen no sign of it.’
‘Her parents are dead.’
‘That doesn’t stop her going to the dry cleaners. If only she’d had some parents we’d have a better idea.’
‘She does have parents,’ Mr Forbes pointed out patiently. ‘Everyone has parents. It’s just that hers are both dead.’
‘So she claims,’ said Mrs Forbes. ‘They probably took one look and abandoned her on a hillside somewhere, the way they do in stories. Orphans, I don’t trust them. Didn’t we see something like that at the Playhouse?’
‘Oedipus,’ said Mr Forbes. ‘Only that was ancient Greece. This is Alwoodley.
‘Ancient Greece? They were wearing suits,’ Mrs Forbes said. ‘He was in a sports car.’
‘That was the production,’ said Mr Forbes.
‘And he had a mobile phone.’
Mr Forbes gave up the struggle and switched to silent mode.
Mrs Forbes’s suspicions notwithstanding there was no mystery about Betty’s origins. Betty was a genuine orphan, her parents both having died when she was in her teens. So far as the marriage was concerned she was trying not to think about them too much: they might have liked Graham; they would certainly have liked his father; it was with his mother they would have drawn the line.
‘I’m going to feel such a fool on the wedding day,’ said his mother. ‘And to think I’ve looked forward to it ever since the day he was born. He’s always been so fastidious. I’ve known him spend half an hour choosing a tie. And he has no end of shoes. It’s such a waste. And God knows what the children will be like.’
‘I suppose…’ mused Mr Forbes.
‘You suppose what?’
‘I suppose they’ve…had it off.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Done it. Got his leg over.’
There was a pained silence. It was an ancient battleground…what she called it, what he called it and whether he was allowed to call it anything at all.
‘I suppose you mean “made love”. Because I prefer not to think of it.’
‘She’s probably,’ said Mr Forbes, warming to the fray, ‘a bit of a goer.’
‘A goer? Edward. When are you going to learn that there are certain phrases you cannot use?’
‘I’ve heard Graham use it.’
‘Graham is different. Graham is young, attractive and drives a sports car. He has a life with the top down and language to match. He can say “guy” and “bird” and “cool”, all the things young people say. You can’t. I heard you say “tits” the other night at the Maynards’. You’re too old to say “tits”.’
‘What age is that? When is the cut-off point? How old does one have to be still to say tits?’
‘It’s not just a question of age. Some people can say it all their lives. Whereas you, you’ve never had enough dash.’
‘Oh. Dash is it now?’
‘Dash. Flair. Brio. All the qualities that come to Graham naturally.’
The irony was that though Graham’s father was much less particular about whom his dashing son chose to marry, like his wife he would have been much happier if Graham had not married at all, though for different reasons. Graham married would leave his father in the entirely undiluted company of his mother, a prospect he dreaded and that she was now envisaging too.
‘With Graham gone at least we will have the cha
nce to get to know one another again. You could introduce me to this internet you’re always buried in. After all, life is for living.’
Mr Forbes who had just made a new and unseemly friend in Samoa saw all his cautious little world about to be kicked over.
He shut the door carefully and settled in front of the screen. Better make the most of it. And here at least he could say tits.
When Mr Forbes wondered if Betty had money he was right. She did. And Graham knew because he worked in a bank.
‘He does not work in a bank,’ said Graham’s mother. ‘He is in banking.’
He had met Betty when she had come in for advice after her father died.
‘These what you call shares,’ said Betty, ‘Dad seems to have quite a collection. There’s even some from Japan.’
‘This is the stock market, Miss Greene,’ said Graham. ‘It is not philately. Let me be the first to congratulate you. You are a rich woman. Bereavement apart, you are laughing.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Betty, who understood perfectly well but thought how nice his hands were.
‘Would you like me to explain?’ said Graham.
‘If it’s no trouble,’ said Betty.
To be taken in by this degree of ingenuousness one has to be pretty ingenuous oneself.