The Laying on of Hands - Alan Bennett [35]
‘I never had chances like he had. And I dare say you didn’t. We never had chances like that, Martin.’
At the ‘we’ Midgley flinched, suddenly finding himself handcuffed to Horsfall in the same personal pronoun.
‘A school like this. Modern buildings. Light. Air. Sporting facilities tip-top. Volleyball. If somebody had come up to me when I was your age and said “There are facilities for volleyball”, I would have gone down on my knees. What do you say?’
The question Horsfall was asking his son had no obvious answer. Indeed, it was not really a question at all. ‘Justify your life’; that was what this dull and dirty youth was being asked to do. Not seeing that justification was necessary, the son was silent and the father waited.
And it was in the middle of this silence that Miss Tunstall came up to say the hospital had telephoned. Except that, sensing this was not simply a silence but an essential part of what was being said, she did not immediately interrupt but made little wavings with her hand behind Mr Horsfall’s head, who—a policeman and ever on the watch for mockery—turned round. So it was to him that Miss Tunstall gave the bad news (a man in any case used to transactions with ambulances, hospitals and all the regimes of crisis).
‘The hospital’s just rung. Mr Midgley’s father’s been taken ill.’ And only then, having delivered her message did she look at Midgley, who thus heard his father was dying at second-hand and then only as a kind of apology.
‘They’re ringing the ward,’ said Midgley. ‘It’s a fall, apparently.’ One ear was in Miss Tunstall’s office, the other fifty miles away in some nowhere behind a switchboard.
‘You want to pray it’s not his hip,’ said Miss Tunstall.
‘That’s generally the weak spot.’ She had a mother of her own. ‘The pelvis heals in no time, surprisingly.’ She did not sound surprised. Her mother had broken her pelvis and she had thought it was the beginning of the end. ‘No. It’s when it’s the hip it’s complicated.’
‘Switchboard’s on the blink,’ said a voice.
‘Join the club,’ said another. ‘I’ve been on the blink all day.’
‘It’s the dreaded lurgi,’ said the first voice.
‘Hello,’ said Midgley. But there was silence.
‘She took a nasty tumble in Safeway’s last week,’ went on Miss Tunstall. ‘They do when they get older. It’s what you must expect.’ She expected it all the time. ‘Their bones get brittle.’
She cracked her fingers and adjusted the spacing.
‘Maintenance,’ said a new voice.
‘I’ve been wrongly connected,’ said Midgley.
‘It’s these ancillary workers,’ said Miss Tunstall. ‘Holding the country to ransom. Other people’s suffering is their bread and butter.’ She was wanting to get on with a notice about some boys acting the goat in the swimming baths but felt she ought to wait until Midgley had heard one way or the other. Her mother was 82. The last twenty years had not been easy and had she known what was in store she thought now she would probably have stabbed her mother to death the second she turned 60. These days it would only have meant a suspended sentence or if the worst came to the worst open prison. Miss Tunstall had once been round such an institution with the school and found it not uncongenial. A picnic in fact.
‘Records are on the warpath again,’ said a voice in Midgley’s ear.
‘It never rains,’ said another.
‘Should I be sterilisin’ this?’ said a black voice.
‘Search me, dear,’ said an emancipated one.
‘Hello,’ said Midgley. ‘HELLO.’
Softly Miss Tunstall began to type.
Midgley thought of his father lying in bed, dying but not wanting to be any trouble.
‘No joy?’ said Miss Tunstall, uncertain whether it would be better to underline ‘the likelihood of a serious accident’. ‘And then they wonder why people are stampeding to BUPA.’
Midgley decided he had been forgotten then a crisp voice suddenly said ‘Sister Tudor’.
‘I’m calling about a patient, a Mr Midgley.’
Noiselessly Miss Tunstall added an exclamation mark to ‘This hooliganism must now STOP!’ and waited, her hands spread over the keys.
‘What is the patient’s name?’
‘Midgley,’ said Midgley. ‘He came in