Steady Now Doctor (5 page)

Chapter 4

Dr Andrew Howard

Andy stared out of the train window as he made his way home. The Dean had said how well he had taken the awful news, but he had done nothing of the sort. All the Dean had done was say some words, words don't mean anything. He could not believe that his mother had been killed. He felt sure that it was a mistake. He just wished the train would hurry, and he could see for himself. Oh why hadn't he made the effort to go down at the weekend and, as he became impatient with himself he kicked his bag and a sense of realization began to dawn.

Setting off for home he had automatically stuffed his bag with his dirty clothes as his mother had instructed. Suddenly he knew she was dead, this was what death meant. There would be no one to wash his clothes, no more Sunday dinners, and no more Yorkshire puddings. He felt his heart was going to burst.

When he thought of his mother he could only think of the good things about her, the way she had taken care of him. The words she spat out meant nothing; words don't mean anything.

He now realized how upset and hurt she must have been when his sister Lettice disappeared from their lives. He was only aware of this when she said goodbye to him at the hostel. In his imagination he saw her with Lettice as the first adored baby, then the little girl in pretty frocks, school, parties, party dresses, boys, one eyed Joe - then gone, without a backward glance.

He wept inwardly for her. Thank God she'd had that write-up in the local paper. The local rag was probably more important to her than a national daily.

He wondered how his father would be. He felt anger towards him.

His parents always rowed bitterly and he knew that his father had extramarital adventures. Perhaps his father would be glad that his mother had died, freeing him to go off with whoever it was that he dallied with in the evenings.

He was determined to be deliberately cool with him when they met.

The train journey seemed endless, but at last they reached his home station. His father was waiting in his car just outside. Andy threw his bag in the back of the car then walked round to the front and got inside beside his father. They looked at each other, wound their arms round each other and wept.

Home was not the chaos he thought it would be. The table was set for lunch. The widow from next door, whose name Andy couldn't remember, seemed to be bustling around in charge.

“I'll see to these,” she said, taking Andy's washing. “You go and sit with your father until lunch is ready.”

Her name came back to Andy, Mrs Robinson. She had always been a widow as far as he could remember. She knew his mother quite well, but they'd always vaguely despised her in a way that family groups do to people who are on their own.

“Ooh look at Mrs so-and-so trying to muscle in on things, there's something odd about her you know.”

People are in some ways like animals, throwing oddities out of the herd. Very nice people do it, but that's how things are.

But now Mrs Robinson was a ministering angel, quiet and almost birdlike. After the years of being unwanted, almost unnecessary, she was wanted and useful and she was determined to make the best job of it she could while it lasted.

Andy still felt that his mother would come round the corner of the door at any moment.

After lunch they had to get down to the serious business of funerals. His mother's GP called and drew some complicated graphs of patterns of life which were meant to be a comfort, but neither Andy or his father had the faintest idea what he was getting at. Andy wondered privately whether the GP fully understood himself. He had probably taken notes at a bereavement lecture and got them muddled.

The phone rang constantly. Fortunately Mrs Robinson took all the calls, filtering through the important ones.

A man in a black car wearing a black tie hovered at the gate.

“Must be the undertaker,” said his father.

They went to the window and beckoned him, the man seemed slightly surprised, but pleased.

Andy met him at the door.

“Do come in,” said Andy.

“No that's all right, sir,” said the man. “I have just called to say that we are tarmacadaming a bit down the road and we've got some to spare and I could give you a good price for your drive.”

“No thank you,” said Andy, “we've just had a death in the family, and we thought you were the undertaker.” This sent the man scuttling off apologizing.

Andy's mother was one of four people killed, but he could not think beyond his own mother's death, and they made no active steps to get in touch with the families who had also been bereaved.

His father was obviously determined to make up in the funeral for many of the things that he had failed to do for his wife during her life. Andy thought he would be the one running around to the funeral director, registering the death, arranging everything, but his father insisted on doing everything himself and remained poised and calm.

The undertaker was charming and helpful. It was a question of putting notices in papers, type of coffin, type of hearse, and how many cars, et cetera.

Andy's mother had been taken to the Chapel of Rest. As the undertaker was leaving Andy walked alongside him and asked if he could possibly go and see his mother in the Chapel of Rest. “I can only advise you not to sir,” said the undertaker.

“I am a medical student,” said Andy.

“I'm afraid, sir, I can only really advise you not to.”

Andy had no idea how much his mother had been smashed up in the crash, but he had a sudden thought of seeing her as one of the formalized dissecting specimens they were working on in the medical school.

They had to fix up the time of the funeral service with a young curate, and as they weren't churchgoers he seemed a bit offhand that they should want an elaborate church service, but nevertheless he was patient with them, and agreed to give her the full works.

Letters started to pour in from everywhere, and the phone was ringing continually for the next few days.

Grandma and Grandpa Butcher came to stay. Grandma was in a terrible state, grandpa said nothing, only looking enviously at a row of books.

There was so much going on, people coming and going.

Mrs Robinson had organized a sort of high tea for the long distance relatives, and after the funeral there would be a glass of sherry for everybody.

Examining the funeral arrangements, Andy was appalled to find that his father had been in touch with the Army Camp that the drama troupe were on their way to. They'd not only had a promise from the Commanding Officer for an Army escort and a firing party, but also the regimental brass band.

Andy just had no time to think or reflect about his mother, most of his reflecting time had been on the train. He still wasn't sure that she was dead, but she must be, there was his father going on as if their marriage had been a love affair akin to Antony and Cleopatra.

The funeral day came, thank God it wasn't raining. It was a reasonably fine autumn day, the Army band played, the church was packed and, of course, with the soldiers and the band and all the fuss literally hundreds came. The church, which could hold 600 or 700, was completely full, and crowds had gathered outside. It was all so unreal, more like a pageant than a funeral.

Andy just wanted to get away and grieve quietly.

The curate did a good job in spite of the fact that he didn't know any of them.

The guard of honour fired a volley over the grave and the band played some sort of funeral march, both there, and as they left the churchyard.

About thirty close relatives and friends filled the house, all jabbering away as if it was a party rather than a funeral. Cousins, aunts, and uncles who hadn't seen each other for years, consuming sandwiches, sausage rolls, trifles and such things.

There was a queue for the two toilets in the house, and fortunately Mrs Robinson had the foresight to get in some extra toilet rolls.

Finally there was a hard core composed of one of his aunts, his grandparents, Andy and his father and Mrs Robinson sitting talking. For the first time they were really talking about his mother. Grandma Butcher, head bowed, weeping steadily into her handkerchief, and Grandpa Butcher, with no book, just sitting looking ahead, and not contributing to the conversation. In the end it was just his grandparents and he and his father, Mrs Robinson had gone home. Then there seemed nothing to talk about. All conversation had been used up.

The next day his father ran the Butchers to the train for them to make the long and tedious journey back to Blackpool, then he took Andy up to the cemetery.

His mother's grave was covered with a mound of wreaths and flowers. His father was strangely silent.

They drove home and there was Mrs Robinson bustling around again, flitting, would have been a more appropriate word, but everything was neat and tidy, everything was washed up. There were some sandwiches on the table.

Andy's father said, “I'm just nipping upstairs for a bit,” and, to his surprise, Andy could hear him sobbing.

He thought of the constant warfare that had gone on between his parents over the years.

Why was he crying now she was gone?

For no reason, Andy's mind suddenly flashed back to the time when he was at the Grammar School and in a boxing match where he and his opponent were so shagged out that they leant against each other. They had got applause for good sportsmanship, whereas, they were so tired that that was the only way they could stay on their feet.

He realized that the continual battle that went on between his parents, really held them in balance against each other, and with one gone it left his father to fall on his face. In spite of all the words that had been flung about for so many years, perhaps he had been a good enough husband and perhaps she had been a good enough wife and mother. She had certainly looked after them.

Andy walked into town to a stationers, and bought a couple of books of leaf type photograph albums where you slide in photographs and they stick up like a pack of cards, each containing about sixty photos. He then went through all the drawers and desks in the house looking for photographs of his mother, slotting them into his new purchases.

Having finished, he took them up to his room and carefully studied the hundred or so photographs he had collected. On nearly every one she was smiling. Could she really have had a happy life?

Tears ran down Andy's cheeks, then, like his father, he turned on his bed and wept.

He stayed another week at home with his father, and they seemed at ease with each other, and Mrs Robinson seemed to be almost a permanent fixture.

Andy was pleased she was unobtrusive, spotless and a good cook, although she couldn't make Yorkshire pudding like his mother, and her Sunday lunches weren't nearly as good, but they weren't bad. Perhaps she'd take care of his father, unless he had other ideas about his future.

It was possible that he already had a partner lined up, but this didn't seem obvious in the way he behaved during the week of the funeral.

At the end of the second week since the day of his mother's death, Andy said he would have to be getting back to medical school.

His father nodded in agreement and said, “Well I expect I must get back to work as well.”

On the Sunday he drove Andy to the station, he had been away from the medical school for two weeks but it seemed like two years.

When he got back everything had been going on apace, and everybody seemed settled and had got on with their studies, their games, their clubs and their associations.

He felt like a stranger coming into the hostel. The others all seemed like old hands with Andy being the only new boy.

When he got back to the physiology department and the anatomy department he was a full two weeks behind everybody and he never caught up.

It took Andy a month to settle back into the hospital and medical school life. He still felt slightly apart from the others, principally because he knew less than anybody else. Being away for two weeks meant that he had lost his place in the Extra ‘A' XV and was now a hooker of the ‘B' XV where the rugby was more social than enthusiastic. In the ‘B' XV he could almost guarantee that he would hook the ball from 95% of the scrums, whoever put the ball in.

So the autumn term drifted on. He went home every Sunday for lunch to keep his father company. Mrs Robinson was a permanent fixture nowadays, coming in each morning and taking care of things. It was purely a business arrangement, and without being unkind, you only had to take one look at Mrs Robinson to know that it could have only been a business arrangement. She was a tremendous boon to them and, of course, they were a tremendous boon to her. Once again in her life she mattered.

“I see that you are living symbiotically with Mrs Robinson,” Andy said to his father.

“No, there's nothing like that,” said his father, looking affronted.

“Symbiosis,” said Andy, “is a physiological situation where two organisms both benefit by associating with each other.”

“Huh,” said his father, “don't get clever medical with me.”

His father had changed since his mother died. The flurry of trying to make up after her death for what he hadn't done when she was alive had died down. Andy was pretty sure that his father had given up his extramarital flings and just solidly grieved for his sparring partner. Andy had once read in some literary work, and he had a feeling that it was to do with King Arthur and his lot, that marriage means obedience, and that romance was outside marriage by definition. Now this father had no longer a safe castle to retire to there was no point in going out and romancing.

Andy grieved for his mother, and grieved particularly for how his relationship with her might have been very different, and it was only in the last couple of months of her life that he had seen flashes of it.

The medical school term eventually finished. The last fixture of the ‘B' XV was played on the main hospital pitch as a curtain raiser to the 1
st
XV's game and some mixture of fixtures. Instead of the ‘B' XV of the other club appearing, they had send their ‘A' XV, and they were huge.