The Laying on of Hands - Alan Bennett [38]
Seeing her stood there in her silly apron he felt sorry for her, and wished he had kept quiet.
‘You get on,’ he said (and because he was sorry for her tried to make it sound as if she was justified), ‘you get on because you both despise me.’
‘Listen.’ She brought him away from the door and closed it. Mrs Barnes next door, who had once described their marriage as uninhibited, was putting out a few opportune clothes. ‘Your father is 74. He is dying. Considering the time you’ve been hanging about here he is possibly already dead yet you resent the fact that he and I were friends. I seem to have married someone very low down in the evolutionary chain. You might want one or two tissues.’ And she darted at him and thrust them into his pocket.
Midgley opened the door again.
‘It’s just that when you and he were together I didn’t exist.’
‘I am married,’ she shouted, ‘to the cupboard under the sink.’ A remark made more mysterious to Mrs Barnes by the sound of a passing ice-cream van playing the opening bars of the ‘Blue Danube’.
‘He is dying, Denis. Will you exist now? Will that satisfy you?’ She was crying.
‘I’ll make it right, Joyce,’ said Midgley. ‘I’ll be there when he goes. I’ll hold his hand.’
He held hers, still in their Union Jack mittens. ‘If I let him down now he’d stay with me the rest of my life. I did love him, Joyce.’
‘I want him to stay with you the rest of your life. That’s what I want. I think of his kindness. His unselfishness. His unflagging courtesy. The only incredible thing is that someone so truly saintly should have produced such a pill of a son.’
She took off Sylvia Plath and hung her behind the door. She had stopped crying.
‘But I suppose that’s your mother.’
‘Shut up about my mother,’ said Midgley.
His mother was a sore point. ‘My mother is dead.’
‘So is your father by now probably. Go!’
Midgley took her by the shoulders.
‘Things will change then, you’ll see. I’ll change. I’ll be a different person. I can … go. Live! Start!’ He kissed her quickly and warmly and ran from the door down the little drive towards the van. His wife rushed to the door to catch him.
‘Start?’ she shouted. ‘Start what? You’re 39.’
‘They had another do today,’ Mrs Barnes told her husband that evening. ‘It doesn’t say much for a university education.’
COMING OFF THE Leeds and Bradford Ring Road Midgley stopped at a zebra to let an old man cross. The old man held up a warning hand, and slowly moved across, glowering at the car. Midgley revved his engine and the old man stopped, glared and went on with seemingly deliberate slowness. Someone behind hooted. Midgley did not wait for the old man to reach the kerb but drove off with a jerk. Glancing in his mirror Midgley saw the old man slip and nearly fall.
At the hospital the first person he saw was Aunty Kitty, his father’s sister. She said nothing, kissing him wordlessly, her eyes closed to indicate her grief lay temporarily beyond speech. The scene played she took his arm (something he disliked) and they followed the signs to Intensive Care.
‘I thought you’d have been here a bit since,’ said his Aunty. ‘I’ve been here since two o’clock. You’ll notice a big change.’ They were going down a long featureless corridor. ‘He’s not like my brother. He’s not the Frank I knew.’ Visitors clustered at the doors ofwards, waiting their turn to sit beside the beds of loved ones. Aunty Kitty favoured them with a brave smile. ‘I don’t dislike this colour scheme,’ she said. ‘I’ve always liked oatmeal. His doctor’s black.’
Intensive Care had a waiting room to itself, presumably, Midgley thought, for the display of Intensive Grief, and there was a woman crying in the corner. ‘Her hubby’s on the critical list,’ mouthed Aunty Kitty.
‘Their eldest girl works for Johnson and Johnson. They’d just got back from Barbados. The nurse is white but she’s not above eighteen.’ The nurse came in. ‘This is my nephew,’ said Aunty Kitty. ‘Mr Midgley’s son. Your father’s got a room to himself, love.’
‘They all do,’ said the nurse, ‘at this stage.’
Midgley’s father lay propped