The Laying on of Hands - Alan Bennett [36]
‘When was he admitted?’
‘This morning.’
‘Midgley.’ There was a pause. ‘We have no Midgley. No Midgley has been admitted here. Are you sure you have the right ward?’
‘He was admitted this morning. I was told he was seriously ill.’
‘Oh yes.’ Her tone changed. ‘Midgley. What is your name?’
‘Midgley.’
‘Are you next of kin?’
‘My father is dead,’ he thought. ‘Only the dead have next of kin.’
‘I’m his son.’
Miss Tunstall folded her hands in her lap.
‘He’s not at all well.’ The tone was reproachful rather than sympathetic. ‘We think he’s had a stroke. He’s been lying on the floor. He ought to have been in hospital sooner. There’s now the question of pneumonia. It’s touch and go.’
‘It’s touch and go,’ said Midgley, putting the phone down.
‘How old is he?’ said Miss Tunstall, noticing she had typed ‘tooling’ for ‘fooling’.
‘He’s 74.’
Her mother was 82. She ripped out the paper and wound in another sheet. Life was unfair.
The door opened.
‘Been on the phone again Midgley?’ said the headmaster. ‘I’m the one who has to go cap in hand to the Finance Committee.’
‘Mr Midgley’s father’s ill,’ said Miss Tunstall, once again the apologetic herald. ‘Apparently it’s touch and go.’
And she started typing like the wind.
‘Of course you can go. Of course you must go. One’s father. There can be no question. A filial obligation.’ Midgley was in the headmaster’s study. ‘It’s awkward, of course. But then it always is.’ It was death. It was a reshuffling of the timetable.
Midgley’s thoughts were with his father in Intensive Care.
‘Was he getting on in years?’
No effort was being spared to keep him alive and in the present and yet grammatically he kept slipping into the past.
‘He’s 74.’
‘Seventy-four. Once upon a time I thought that was old. You won’t be gone long? What, three, four days?’ In his mind the headmaster roughed out a timetable whereby Midgley senior could decently die, be buried and Midgley junior be back in harness. Radical surgery on the timetable might still be avoided.
‘Let me see. It’s English, Integrated Humanities and Creative Arts, nothing else, is there?’
‘Environmental Studies.’
The headmaster groaned. ‘That’s the awkward one. Pilbeam’s off on another course. That’s the trouble with the environment, it involves going on courses. I’ll be glad when the environment is confined to the textbooks.’
‘Ah well,’ said the headmaster. ‘It can’t be helped.’ He had never understood the fuss people made about their parents. ‘Both of mine were despatched years ago. A flying bomb.’ He made it sound like a victory for common sense.
‘He must have fallen and not been able to get up,’ said Midgley. ‘He was lying there two days.’
‘An all too familiar scenario these days,’ said the headmaster. ‘Isolated within the community. Alone in the crowd. You must not feel guilty.’
‘I generally go over at weekends,’ said Midgley.
‘It will give Tomlinson an opportunity to do some of his weird and wonderful permutations with the timetable. Though I fear this one will tax even Tomlinson’s talents.’
The headmaster opened the door.
‘One must hope it is not as grave as it appears. One must hope he turns the corner. Corners seem to have gone out of medicine nowadays. In the old days the sick were always turning them. Illness is now much more of a straight road. Why is that?’
It was not a question he wanted answering.
‘Antibiotics?’ said Midgley, lingering.
‘Sometimes one has the impression modern medicine encourages patients to loiter.’ It was Midgley who was taking his time.
‘Mistakenly, one feels. God speed.’
Miss Tunstall had finished the notice about acting the goat in the swimming baths and the headmaster now glanced through it, taking out his pen. She made a start on another notice about the bringing of pupils’ cars to school, one of the head’s ‘privilege not a right’ notices. Midgley still hesitated.
‘I’m not sure if we’ve couched this in strong enough terms, Daphne.’
‘It’s as you dictated it.’
‘I have no doubt. But I feel more strongly about it now. Nothing else is there, Midgley?’
Midgley shook his head