Vail (12 page)

‘The
North?'

I nodded without speaking.

‘Thought so. I can see it in your face.'

Instead of being circumspect and moving on I said rashly, ‘What can you see?'

‘Workshy. Shiftless. Sneaky. Untrustworthy. Layabout.'

‘Oh?'

‘You Held the Country to Ransom and Priced Britain Out of World Markets and now you're unemployed you're forever looking for State Handouts and Fiddling the Social Security and Sponging Off Society.'

I now kept my mouth shut. Other people gathered as the woman went on:

‘This Country doesn't Owe you a Living, you know. If you hadn't Wrecked Britain's Economic Performance with your Excessive Wage Demands and Restrictive Practices we might still have a Favourable Balance of Payments. As it is we're Bottom of the Uropean League Table, Begging for Crumbs at the Rich Man's Table.'

Her face was round and smooth and high-coloured, polished to a sheen like a rosy apple. I had read Enid Blyton as a child and that's who she reminded me of, though I had no idea what Enid Blyton looked like. She wore a cardigan with pearl buttons fastened up to the neck and a fine woven houndstooth skirt with small pleats at either side.

Still I said nothing.

‘What are you doing down here anyway? There's nothing for you here. We don't want your dirt and disease, your AIDS and Down's Syndrome. Get back up North where you belong.'

‘Yes, why
are
you here? What is it you want?' said a tall bleak man with spectacles and a lipless mouth whose jacket hung
emptily on him as on a coat-hanger. ‘Do as this lady says and return to those streets where one assumes you eat tripe and black puddings out of tin baths, don't wash your feet and wear flat caps in bed. Haven't you done enough harm?'

The lady in cardigan and houndstooth skirt said, ‘There's no reasoning with them. For generations they were kept in their place, docile, subservient, fawning, grateful for what they were allowed to have and we were generous enough to give them. Then they got ideas. I blame ITV. Can you imagine, – fitted carpets, central heating, freezers, video recorders and double glazing in a slum! The idea! Spoiled? I should indubitably say so!'

I had some vacuum-packed boiled ham inside my shirt and half a pound of foil-wrapped coffee in my underpants, so I thought it expedient not to refute these sentiments. I would have to shop-lift elsewhere for my dairy produce. I eased myself out of the crowd.

‘See? Look at him, sloping off!' said another woman with snide gusto. She was younger than the first woman, and rather attractive, blonde hair swirled up onto the top of her dainty head and held in place by a diamanté comb. ‘Typical.' She screwed up her face. ‘Bloody bolshie bastard!'

The tall bleak man poked a finger into me, just missing the boiled ham.

‘You do realise what you've done, don't you? You and the rest of your lazy good-for-nothing pals? Sold This Country Down the River. That's what. Brought This Once-Proud Nation to its Knees. Well. I suppose you're happy now, aren't you? I suppose you're satisfied. I suppose you expect the rest of us to keep you in the style to which you've become accustomed, don't you?'

Enid Blyton kicked me on the shinbone. My gasp of pain triggered the latent fury residing a bare millimetre beneath the ordered, genteel exterior of these good people, causing someone at the back to throw a 500 ml carton of Cornish double cream which exploded and ejected its contents down the front of my shirt. Other esculent missiles followed in rapid, accurate succession, some of them hard such as jars of Chiver's thick cut marmalade, others soft and splattery: yoghurt, fruit, eggs, tomatoes, for
example. I ran into the street stinking and afraid; they would have thrown warm turds had there been any to hand.

By sounding the long ‘a' and softening my speech to a suave murmur I succeeded in asking directions to the nearest hospital and received a helpful, non-hostile reply. The two-storey building was modern and new, set in its own grounds laid out with skill, expense and professional pride. There was even, as I recall, a small ornamental lake with weeping willows and lily pads.

It was dusk when I drove through the wrought-iron gates and parked between the yellow lines, covering over a stencilled hieroglyph which read: ‘AG/C2'.

I wrapped Bev in a tartan blanket and carried her up the steps into the glazed reception hall. The doors slid open noiselessly at my approach and closed just as silently behind me. Neat wooden signs stuck out at right-angles along a restful green corridor, their black lettering sealed inside a coating of quick-wipe glare-free polyurethane: E.N.T., OCC. THERAPY, E.C.G., OPTH. SURG., SR. NRS. OFF., W.C. The lighting was of the diffused type so that it didn't hurt one's eyes. There was no one about.

I walked on the rubbery yielding floor, holding Bev firmly because it seemed that if I didn't she might float away. Her face had that translucent quality you might have seen in paintings of the madonna or in photographs of babies inside their mothers' wombs.

A heavy-busted nurse, all crackling starch and plastic pen-tops, passed directly across the corridor in front of me, in transit between wards, swivelled in mid-stride and came back to confirm her first subliminal impression.

‘Might I inquire where you're taking that child?'

‘Hello, nurse. This is my daughter, Bev. Could you find someone to attend to her? I think she's dying.'

‘Nonsense,' the nurse said briskly, who according to her blue plastic name tab was Staff Nurse P. Bracegirdle. Without looking
at Bev, she said, ‘This isn't a casualty hospital. The nearest one is in Huntingdon. You can't miss it, it's directly off the Al.'

‘She isn't a casualty, she's dying,' I said. ‘Please find a doctor. I'll wait here.'

‘Do you suppose that doctors are at your beck and call?' Her tone of voice was finely balanced between amused irony and a stern affront. Then, almost immediately, her precise eyebrows snapped together in an accusing frown. ‘You're not local. You don't sound local. Are you local?'

‘Under the circumstances is it important? Please find a doctor for her. We can discuss my antecedents and geographical heritage later.'

She didn't intend to budge, that much was plain. How long could we stand here, confronting one another? I stepped round her and continued on my way. Staff Nurse Bracegirdle came after me but drew the line at actually touching my stiff pungent shirt. She had caught a whiff of sour cream, eggs and yoghurt in my passing. We bandied more words, the upshot of which was that she backed away, both slender sanitised palms upraised, and said, ‘If you'll stay here and promise not to move I'll see if I can get someone.'

Thus it was that I came to be ushered into the presence of Dr Tocktor, a small grey eminence sitting behind a plain bare desk in a tiny room with one window. It was dark outside, the curtains were undrawn, and in the hard black rectangle I could see myself mirrored holding a limp blanket in my arms.

Dr Tocktor didn't speak, merely pointed to a wooden chair. There were voices and footsteps in the corridor. The door opened and Staff Nurse Bracegirdle entered followed by three people in white coats, all of whom arranged themselves, standing, on either side of Dr Tocktor, which while bolstering his authority and prestige made him seem smaller, greyer, more shrunken than before. Almost insubstantial, in fact, so that in my fevered imagination I could see through him to the chair in which he sat.

‘Doctor's waiting,' said Staff Nurse Bracegirdle.

I began. ‘I would be most grateful, doctor, if you could spare the time to look at my daughter Bev. As you can see, she's very ill.
If she doesn't receive some attention soon she's going to die, – '

‘Are you a doctor?' interrupted one of the others. I shook my head and this same person went on, ‘Dr Tocktor's had over twenty-five years' experience. A little bit more than you, I dare say.'

I had to agree. ‘I'm sure the doctor is highly qualified, – '

‘Very
highly qualified,' another of the people said. ‘No one has
ever
questioned Dr Tocktor's expertise and professional integrity in all the years he's been working here. He's noted for it.'

‘I'm glad to hear it.'

‘And so you should be.'

‘I am, – '

‘Twenty-five
years
,' said Staff Nurse Bracegirdle vehemently. ‘Have you any idea of the sacrifices and dedication and heartaches that has entailed? The exams he had to pass, the years of penny-pinching, the bone-weary hours late at night when he was dead on his feet and would have loved a long hot soak and a good night's sleep but had to carry on regardless till the early hours of the morning? You can't conceive.'

‘No, I can't,' I admitted. ‘I'm sure the doctor is everything you say he is – very highly qualified, with long experience, expert and dedicated and so on.'

There were one or two satisfied nods. They had made their point.

Dr Tocktor hadn't spoken a word or moved a muscle during this. He was gazing in my general direction but not quite at me, at a spot on the wall about nine or ten inches to my left. Had he taken any of this in? I wondered. Was he with us in spirit if not in the flesh?

‘What's the matter with daughter?' asked one of the standing people.

‘I don't know, I'm not a doctor,' I said. ‘But I think, – that is, I believe, I'm of the opinion, – that she's dying.'

‘And what has led you to this ‘opinion'?' Staff Nurse Bracegirdle asked, a snide smile shimmering at the corners of her immaculate lips. I thought I saw her nudge one of the others playfully.

‘You only have to look at her. She has sores on her face, neck and chest. She's down to less than three stone. She's been in a coma for the past four days. She has a temperature, her breathing is very shallow and her pulse is weak.'

‘So you think she might be ill.'

‘Yes. I'm not an expert, – '

‘We've established that,' said one. ‘Doctor is the expert. It's up to him to decide whether daughter's ill or not. In this hospital we do things by the book.'

A lengthy silence ensued. I could hear the ticking of Dr Tocktor's watch on his thin grey wrist. Were they waiting for me? I'd explained the symptoms, there was nothing more to say. I racked my brains. Should I tell them I'd given her
Temporal
? No, they'd frown on that, on a lay person administering unauthorised drugs without proper medical supervision. I waited some more. It seemed that several minutes elapsed, though it was probably only three or four.

Footsteps went by outside, metallic and feminine, and I heard a voice say, ‘Oh, Miss on , a word …'

‘How long has daughter been like this?' one or other wanted to know. I broke out of the light trance I'd fallen into and said, ‘Several weeks at least. I should say two months, give or take a week or two.'

Staff Nurse Bracegirdle worked her tongue behind her lower lip and wormed it to the side of her mouth so that her cheek bulged with sardonic mischief. ‘Rather vague, aren't we?' she said with a raised eyebrow. ‘My goodness. ‘Give or take a week or two.' That could mean almost anything.'

‘Well,' I said, ‘some considerable time anyway. The symptoms came on slowly.'

‘That's even vaguer,' another scoffed. ‘‘Some considerable time' and ‘slow symptoms', – whatever they are, – aren't a recognised part of medical parlance. You might just as well have
said, ‘I haven't a clue' or ‘I can't remember' for all the help that is. Doctors should know better.'

‘I'm not a doctor,' I said.

‘We've established that,' Staff Nurse Bracegirdle said with a touch of asperity bordering on irritation. ‘What we're saying is not doctors
ought
to know better but doctors
should
know better, and they do. You're not denying that, I hope?' Again the condescendingly amused crinkle at the corner of her mouth.

The grey incorporeal shadow that was Dr Tocktor turned its head to one side and the four staff in attendance leaned forward in collective reverence. The doctor's thin lips didn't move, or if they did I didn't see them; yet Staff Nurse Bracegirdle straightened up and requested that I move my chair farther back.

‘Back where?'

‘Away from the desk.'

‘How far away?'

‘Twenty-five centimetres or ten inches.'

I complied by edging the chair back the required distance with the backs of my knees and sat down again. Dr Tocktor, I now noticed, was looking directly at me, – still not into my eyes, but at the centre of my forehead. Were we getting somewhere at last?

‘If you would consider admitting my daughter for observation,' I ventured, ‘I'm positive you'll discover that she really is in a very serious condition.'

The four exchanged surprised if rather tolerant looks.

One or other said, ‘Well, that's something of an advance, I suppose. At least now he's
positive
. Before it was merely a ‘belief', an ‘opinion'. Well, well. What is it they say, – a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?'

‘Learning.'

‘Are you a doctor?' Staff Nurse Bracegirdle flashed.

‘No,' I said. ‘Sorry.'

‘Who is the doctor?'

‘Him.'

‘Him!'

‘Dr Tocktor.'

‘It would be well for you to remember that. You haven't been secretly trying to edge your chair nearer the desk, have you?'

I shook my head.

‘We're watching. We can tell. None of us are fools here. We're all very highly qualified and very experienced. Just remember that.'

Dr Tocktor looked at his watch, the cue for Staff Nurse Bracegirdle to say briskly: ‘Come. You've taken up enough of doctor's valuable time. I'm sure daughter isn't as bad as you make out. Give her a Panadol or one of those similar kinds of small round white tablets and let her sleep it off. Plenty of fluids. Keep her bowels open. In the morning all your fears will be foolish daydreams. Take doctor's word for it.'