The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches Page 7

  She took up a sandwich without enthusiasm, sat with it in her hand, and at last did look at him. A rapid once-over, expecting the worst: her face seemed forever set in sarcastic rage.

  ‘Well, then, what’s all this for?’ she asked, cold.

  ‘I used to work in a D.H.S.S. office,’ he said, as if it were an explanation. Her face-if this was possible-got even harder and angrier. Her eyes narrowed and shot out beams of hate. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘I know what you want to say.’

  ‘No you don’t. You don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘I’m making a fair old guess,’ he said, with deliberate humour, but she wasn’t going to have that.

  ‘You don’t know a bloody thing about me and you’re not going to.’

  ‘I know you haven’t got the money to feed your kids.’

  ‘How do you know I’ve got kids?’

  He smiled, mildly impatient. ‘I wouldn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes. And I’m sure you wouldn’t be begging if you didn’t need it for your kids.’

  This froze her up. She had not known, it seemed, that she had been observed begging. Then she decided not to care. She crammed in a big bite of the sandwich, holding her cigarette at the ready in the other hand. ‘I suppose you’re full of remorse about being on strike,’ she jeered, as soon as her mouth was empty.

  ‘I told you, I used to work there. I don’t now. I left a year ago. I left because I couldn’t stand it.’

  It was evident he needed to go on telling her, but she shook her head to say she wasn’t interested.

  ‘I’d like to kill them,’ she said, meaning it. ‘I would if I could. What do they think … they don’t think. I haven’t been able to collect any money for three weeks and it was their mistake in the first place, not mine. And now they’re on strike. They owe me a full month. I haven’t paid my rent. I borrowed money from someone who doesn’t have any either. Then they go on strike for a rise … they don’t care about us, they never think about what is happening to us. I could kill them.’

  He said uncomfortably, his eyes bright with sympathy for her, ‘Look at it from their point of view …’

  ‘What point of view?’ she cut in. ‘I’m only interested in my point of view. I had a friend downstairs, she killed herself last time they decided to treat themselves to going on strike. She had two kids. They’re in care now. I got myself a job a couple of months ago. It wasn’t much of a job but it was a job. But hanging around Social Security day after day to try and get my money out of them, I lost it. Now I haven’t even got that. I’m not going to try for another job, what’s the point? If I did get one, the shitting D.H.S.S. would decide to go on strike again.’ She delivered all this in a cold level tone, her eyes-the vulnerable eyes of a girl-staring off at nothing. She was probably seeing visions of herself killing enemies.

  He said, sounding discouraged, ‘Not everyone in the Social Security agrees with the strike. I’m sure of that.’

  ‘I don’t care. Well, I’ve come to begging. I did it last time they went on strike. I shoplifted too. If I hadn’t, the kids’d’ve starved.’

  ‘How many have you got?’

  ‘What’s it to you? I’m not telling you anything.’

  He leaned forward, peering into the cloud of smoke she sat in, and said, speaking slowly and deliberately, to make her listen to him, ‘When I started working there it was all different. Fifteen years ago … I really liked it then, I liked …’ Here he censored ‘helping people’, but she heard it and gave him a sour smile. ‘But then everything slowly went to pot. In those days there was a good atmosphere, not like it is now. We were understaffed suddenly. Then the cuts … suddenly they put up partitions and glass panels and bars in the windows. We were shut off from-the customers, so to speak. It was like being in a cage. Not that I wasn’t sometimes glad of the protection.’ He laughed: it sounded like grudging admiration. He held out his arm and pulled back the sleeve of his jacket, showing a reddened lump just above his wrist. ‘See that? That’s where a girl bit me. She went berserk …’

  ‘Probably me,’ she said, not looking at him. Her pose said she didn’t want to listen to all this. His attitude said that he had to say it: he was full of the need to tell her.

  ‘No, it wasn’t you. I’ll never forget that girl.’

  ‘Could have been, though.’

  “Then you’d have been in the wrong of it. That time it wasn’t our fault. She got herself in a muddle and blamed us.’

  ‘If you say so. If you say something then it has to be true. No appeal. Going berserk, is that what you call it?’ She was stubbing out a cigarette and wondering whether to light another. She looked at her watch: yes, she had a bit more time.

  He said, ‘Ten quid’s worth of food isn’t going to get you very far.’

  ‘I’ve got the ten that rich cow gave me.’

  He took out his wallet, extracted a £10 note, then a £5 note, and handed them to her. ‘Go into the shop again. Stock up a bit.’

  She looked at the money in her hand, her mouth ugly. She got up, then remembered the carrier bags on the chair beside her, and was about to take them into the shop with her.

  ‘Do you think I’m going to steal them?’ He sounded hurt, but she only shrugged, and went into the supermarket. While she was gone he allowed his face to show what he was feeling: anger, but it was different from hers, and he did not seem able to believe what he was remembering, what he was thinking. He was full of frustration.

  When she came back laden he was smiling. She could hardly walk as she returned to the table. He said, ‘Sit down, finish your sandwiches.’

  She considered this on its merits. She sat. And ate up the sandwiches slowly, methodically, without appetite.

  He watched her. He said, ‘I’ve been driving a minicab for a year now. I don’t earn what I did, but we manage.’

  No response. She had lit another cigarette.

  ‘I’ve got a wife and two kids,’ he said.

  ‘Good for them.’

  ‘If you want to put that stuff in my car I’ll run you home.’

  ‘What sort of a fool do you take me for? For £25 and some coffee and sandwiches you’d know where I live.’

  Now he sat silenced.

  She glanced up because he had not replied, saw his face, and said, ‘No I don’t trust anyone. And I never will again.’

  ‘You’re going to stagger home with all that stuff rather than trust me?’

  “That’s right.’ She stood, and hoisted up the bags. One held twenty pounds of potatoes.

  He got up too. ‘If you put that stuff in my car I’ll run you somewhere near where you live. You can tell me where to stop. It’ll cut down the distance a bit.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re doing this. And I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck.’

  ‘All right,’ he said patiently, though he sounded fed up. ‘1 didn’t ask you to care. I made you an offer. Anyway, don’t be so bloody stupid. If I wanted to find out where you live all I’d have to do is hang around the schools in the area. It’s probably Fortescue, isn’t it?’ He was going on, but stopped, because of her face.

  ‘All right,’ she said, not looking at him.

  He took a couple of the carriers from her, and went across the road in front of her, holding up his hand to slow a car. She followed. She got into the back seat. He put the carriers in beside her. He got into the front seat and said, ‘Where to?’

  ‘Just drive down this street.’

  After about a mile, near Kentish Town, she said, This’ll do.’

  He stopped the car. She got out. He was gazing in front of him, not at her.

  She said, and it killed her to say it, “Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ he said.

  He sat on there, watching her go slowly along the pavement, her shoulders pulled down with the weight of the bags. She turned into a street he knew she did not live in. He was waiting to see if she would turn and wave or smile or even just look at him, but she did not.<
br />
  Casualty

  All of them looking one way, they sat on metal chairs, the kind that are hard and slippery and stack into each other. They kept their attention on the woman behind the reception desk, who was apparently not interested in them now she had their names, addresses, complaints all tidily written down on forms. She was an ample young woman with the rainy violet eyes that seem designed only for laughing or weeping, but now they were full of the stern impartiality of justice. Her name button said she was Nurse Doolan.

  It was a large room with walls an uninteresting shade of beige, bare except for the notice, ‘If You Have Nothing Urgently Wrong Please Go To Your Own Doctor’. Evidently the twenty or so people here did not believe their own doctors were as good as this hospital casualty department. Only one of them seemed in urgent need, a dishevelled woman of forty or so with dyed orange hair, who was propping her wrapped left hand on her right shoulder. Everyone knew the wrist was broken because the woman with her had nodded commandingly at them, turning round to do it, and mouthed, ‘Her wrist. She broke it.’ Satisfied they must all acknowledge precedence, she had placed her charge in the end of the front row nearest to the door that said ‘No Admittance’. They did not challenge her. The broken-wristed one, exhausted with pain, drowsed in her seat, and her face was bluish white, so that with the brush of orange hair she looked like a clown. But Nurse Doolan did not seem to think she deserved more than the others, for when the next name was called it was not the owner of the wrist. ‘Harkness,’ said Nurse Doolan and while an apparently fit young man walked into ‘No Admittance’ the poor clown’s attendant stood up and complained, ‘But it is urgent, it is a broken wrist.’

  ‘Won’t be long,’ said Nurse Doolan, and placidly studied her pile of forms.

  ‘They don’t care. They don’t care at all,’ said an old woman in a wheelchair. Her voice was loud and accusing. She was fat and looked like a constipated frog. Her face, full of healthy colour, showed a practised resignation to life’s taunts. ‘I fell down a good six hours ago, and my shoulder’s broke, I know that!’ The elderly woman sitting with her did not try to engage anyone’s sympathy, but rather avoided eyes that had already clearly said. Rather you than me! She said quietly, ‘It’s all right, Auntie, don’t go on.’

  ‘Don’t go on, she says,’ said the old woman, eighty if she was a day, and full of energy. ‘It’s all right for some.’

  A boy of about twelve emerged from the mysteries behind ‘No Admittance’ with a crutch and a bandaged foot, and was guided through this waiting room to the outside pavement by a nurse who left him there, presumably to be picked up. She came back.

  ‘Nurse,’ said the old woman, ‘my shoulder’s broke and I’ve been sitting here for hours … ever so long,’ she added, as her relative murmured, ‘Not long. Auntie, only half an hour.’

  This nurse glanced towards Doolan at Reception, who signalled with her violet eyes. Nurse Bates, directed, stopped by the wheelchair and switched on appropriate sympathy. ‘Let’s have a look,’ she said. The elderly niece drew back part of a bright pink cardigan from the shoulder which sat there, stoutly and soberly bare, except for a grimy shoulder strap. ‘You want me naked, I suppose that’s it now! For everyone to gape at! That’s it, I suppose!’ The nurse bent over the shoulder, gently manipulating it, while everybody stared somewhere else, so as not to give the old horror the satisfaction of feeling looked at.

  ‘Owwwww,’ wailed the old woman.

  ‘You’ll live,’ said the nurse briskly, straightening herself.

  ‘It’s broken, isn’t it?’ urged Auntie.

  ‘You’ve got a bit of a bruise, but that’s about it, I think. They’ll find out in X-ray.’ And she stepped smartly off towards ‘No Admittance’, raising her brows and smiling with her eyes at Nurse Doolan, who smiled with hers.

  “They don’t care,’ came the loud voice. ‘None of them care. How’d you like to be lying on the floor by yourself half the night and no one near you to lift you up?’

  The elderly niece, a thin and colourless creature who probably-though for her sake everyone hoped not-devoted her life to this old bully, did not bother to defend herself, but smoothed back the pink cardigan over the shoulder which if you looked hard did have a mauveish shine.

  ‘Day after day, sitting by myself, I might as well be dead.’

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea. Auntie?’

  ‘Might as well, if you’ll put yourself out. Not that it’ll be worth drinking.’

  The niece allowed her face to show a moment’s exhaustion as she turned away from Auntie, but then she smiled and went through the rows of waiting people with ‘Excuse me, excuse me, please’.

  ‘Fanshawe,’ said Nurse Doolan, apparently in reply to some summons in the ether, for no one had come out.

  A man of sixty-five or so, who wore a red leather slipper on one foot, used a stick to heave himself up, and walked slowly to the inner door, careful the stick did not slip.

  ‘You’d think they’d have nonslip floors,’ came from the wheelchair.

  ‘They are nonslip,’ said Doolan firmly.

  ‘Better be safe than sorry,’ said Mr Fanshawe going into ‘No Admittance’ with a wink all round that meant he wasn’t going to be associated with that old bitch.

  ‘And what about my sister?’ asked the woman who was now cradling the broken-wristed one. Her voice trembled, and she seemed about to weep with indignation.

  And indeed the poor clown seemed half conscious, her orange head drooping, then jerking up, then falling forward, and she even groaned. She heard herself groan and embarrassment woke her up. She flashed painful smiles along the front row, and as far as she could turn her head to the back. ‘I fell,’ she muttered, confessing it, begging forgiveness. ‘I fell, you see.’

  ‘You’re not the only one to fall,’ came from the wheelchair.

  There’s been a bad accident,’ said Nurse Doolan. ‘They’ve been working in there like navvies these last three hours.’

  ‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ That’s what it is, then!’ ‘Oh well, in that case …’ came from the longsuffering crowd.

  ‘Never seen anything like it,’ said Nurse Doolan, sharing this with them.

  It was noticeable that she and some others glanced nervously at the old woman, who decided not to have her say, not this time. And here was her niece with her tea in the plastic foam cup.

  ‘And what did I tell you?’ demanded Auntie, taking the cup and at once noisily gulping the tea. ‘Plastic rubbish and it’s cold, you’d think …’

  A trundling sound from inside ‘No Admittance’. As the doors opened there emerged the back of a young black porter in his natty uniform, then a steel trolley, and on the trolley a human form rolled in bandages to the waist, but naked above and showing a strong healthy young man’s chest. Black. From the neck began a cocoon: a white bandaged head. Alert brown eyes looked out from the cocoon. The trolley disappeared into the interior of the hospital on its way to some ward several floors up.

  “The wrist,’ said Nurse Doolan, ‘Bisley,’ and the woman with the broken wrist was urged to her feet by her sister, and stood swaying. Doolan at once pressed a bell which they heard shrilling inside ‘No Admittance’. The same nurse came running out, saw why she had been summoned, and with Nurse Bates on one side and her sister on the other the half-conscious Wrist was supported within.

  Now a new addition to the morning’s casualties. In came two young women, made up and dressed up as if off to a disco, chattering away and apparently in the best of health. They lowered their voices, sensing that their jollity was not being appreciated, and sat at the very back, whispering and sometimes giggling. What could they be doing in Casualty?

  It seemed that at any moment this was what the old woman would start asking, for she was fixing them with a hard, cold, accusing look. ‘Auntie,’ said her niece hastily, ‘would you like another tea? I could do with one myself.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ And she graciously handed over h
er cup. The niece went out again.

  And then, everything changed. A group of young men appeared outside the glass doors to the world where cars came and went, where visitors walked past, where there was ordinariness and health. This group sent waves of urgency and alarm into the waiting room even before the doors opened.

  A young workman in white overalls blotched with red stood gripping the edge of a door because over his shoulder lay a body, and it was heavy, as they could all see, being limp and with no fight in it. This body was a young man too, but his white overalls were soaked with a dreadful dark pulsing blood that still welled from somewhere.

  ‘Why didn’t you …’ began Nurse Doolan, on her way to saying, ‘You’re not supposed to come in at that door, you need a stretcher, this isn’t at all how we do things …’ Something on these lines, but no one would ever know, for having taken one look at what was before them, she put her thumb down on the bell to make it shrill in the ears of the doctors and nurses working inside out of sight.

  Feet and voices, and out came running the same nurse; three doctors-two women and a man-and a porter with a stretcher.

  Seeing the group of young men just inside the door these professionals all stopped still, and the main woman doctor waved aside the stretcher.

  ‘He fell off the roof,’ said the young man who held his mate. ‘He fell off.’ He sounded incredulous, appealing to them, the experts, to say that this was impossible and could not have happened. His mate at his elbow, a youth whose sky-blue overalls had no spot or stain, corroborated, ‘Yes, he fell off. Suddenly he wasn’t there. And then …’ Another youth, following behind, still held a paint roller in one hand. Orange paint. These three young men were about twenty, certainly not more than twenty-two or twenty-three. They were pale, shocked, and their eyes told everyone they had seen something terrible and could not stop looking at it.

  The woman doctor in charge summoned the group forward, and the doctors and nurse stood to one side as the young men went through into ‘No Admittance’. Blood pattered down.

  And then they were all able to see the face that hung over the blood-soaked shoulder. It was dull grey, not a colour many of them were likely to have seen on a face. The mouth hung open. The eyes were open. Blue eyes … The professionals followed the young men in, and the doors swung shut.