The Laying on of Hands - Alan Bennett [37]
‘A boy slips. Is pushed and we are talking about concussion. A broken neck. A fatality, Daphne. I intend to nail the culprits. I want them to know they will be crucified.’
‘Shall I put that?’
The headmaster looked at her sharply and wondered if Miss Tunstall was through the menopause.
‘We must find a paraphrase. But first the problems caused by this business of Midgley père. Ask Tomlinson to step over will you, Daphne. Tell him to bring his coloured pencils. And a rubber.’
‘Tomato or my jam?’
‘Tomato.’
The hospital was fifty miles away. His wife was making him sandwiches. He sat in his raincoat at the kitchen table, watching her apply a faint smear of Flora to the wholemeal bread.
‘I wanted to go over this last weekend,’ said Midgley. ‘I would have gone over if your Margaret hadn’t suddenly descended.’
‘You knew they were coming. They’d been coming for weeks. It’s one of the few things Mother’s got to look forward to.’ Mrs Midgley’s mother was stood staring out of the window. ‘Don’t blame our Margaret.’
‘I just never expected it,’ said Midgley.
If you expected something it didn’t happen.
‘I expected it,’ said his wife, putting on a shiny plastic apron emblazoned with a portrait of Sylvia Plath.
‘I expected it. Last time I went over he came to the door to wave me off. He’s never done that before. Bless him.’ She slipped on a pair of padded Union Jack mittens and sinking to her knees before the oven gave the Shift a trial blast. ‘I think people know.’
‘He does come to the door,’ said Midgley. ‘He always comes to the door.’ And it was true he did, but only, Midgley felt, to show that the visit had been so short it needed extending. Though once, catching sight of him in the rear-view mirror, waving, Midgley had cried.
‘He was trying to tell me something,’ said his wife.
‘I know a farewell when I see one.’ A fine spray misted the oven’s pale grey walls. ‘Shouldn’t you be going?’
‘Is it Saturday today?’ said her mother.
Ten minutes later Midgley was sitting on the stairs and his wife had started hoovering.
‘I’m not going to let him down. I want to be there when he goes,’ shouted Midgley.
The vacuum was switched off.
‘What?’
‘He loved me.’
‘I can’t think why,’ said Midgley’s wife. ‘It’s not as if you take after him,’ and she switched on again, ‘not one little bit.’
‘Joyce,’ her mother called, ‘when is that chiropodist coming?’
Midgley looked at his watch. It was three o’clock. At ten past Mrs Midgley took to dusting. It was always assumed the housework put her in a bad temper. The truth was if she was in a bad temper she did the housework. So it came to the same thing.
‘He had strength,’ she said, dusting a group of lemonade bottles of various ages. ‘Our Colin is going to be strong. He loved Colin.’
‘Does he know?’ asked Midgley.
‘Yes. Only it hasn’t hit him yet.’
Hoarse shouting and a rhythmic drumming on the floor indicated that his son was seeking solace in music.
‘When it does hit him,’ said his mother, picking at a spot of rust on a recently acquired Oxo tin, ‘he is going to be genuinely heartbroken. There’s always a gap. It was on Woman’s Hour. Poor old Frank.’
‘I’ve never understood,’ said Midgley, ‘why you call him Frank. He’s my father.’
She looked at the 1953 Coronation mug, wondering if it was altogether too recent an artefact to have on display.
‘He has a name. Frank is his name.’
It was not only the date, the Coronation mug was about the only object in the house Midgley had contributed to the decor, having been issued with it in 1953 when he was at primary school.
‘I call him Dad,’ said Midgley.
‘He’s not Dad, is he? Not my dad, I call him Frank because that’s the name of a person. To me he is a person. That’s why we get on.’
She was about to hide the mug behind a cast-iron money-box in the shape of a grinning black man then thought better of it. They had too many things. And there would be more coming from his dad. She cheered up slightly.
Her husband kissed her and opened the back door.
‘It isn’t though,’ he said.
‘It isn’t what?’
‘Why you get on. Treating him