The Laying on of Hands - Alan Bennett [40]
‘I always thought I’d be the first to go,’ said Aunty Kitty, looking at an advertisement in Country Life. ‘Fancy. Two swimming pools. I could do without two swimming pools. When you get to my age you just want somewhere you can get round nicely with the hoover. They’ve never got to the bottom of my complaint. They lowered a microscope down my throat but there was nothing. I wouldn’t live in Portugal if they paid me. Minstrels’ gallery, I shouldn’t know what to do with a minstrels’ gallery if I had one. Mr Penry-Jones wanted to put me on this machine the Duke of Gloucester inaugurated. This body-scan thing. Only there was such a long waiting-list apparently.’
A nurse came through.
‘She’s the one I was telling you about. I asked her if your dad was in a coma or just unconscious. She didn’t know. They’re taking them too young these days.’
‘Aunty,’ said Midgley.
‘It isn’t as if she was black. Black you don’t expect them to know.’
‘What was my dad like?’
Aunty Kitty thought for a moment.
‘He never had a wrong word for anybody. He’d do anybody a good turn. Shovel their snow. Fetch their coal in. He was that type. He was a saint. You take after your mother more.’
‘I feel I lack his sterling qualities,’ said Midgley some time later. ‘Grit. Patience. Virtues bred out of adversity.’
‘You wouldn’t think they’d have curtains in a hospital, would you?’ said Aunty Kitty. ‘You wouldn’t think curtains would be hygienic. I’m not keen on purple anyway.’
‘Deprivation for instance,’ said Midgley.
‘What?’
‘I was never deprived. That way he deprived me. Do you understand?’
‘I should have gone to secondary school,’ she said. ‘I left at thirteen, same as your dad.’
‘I know I had it easier than he did,’ said Midgley. ‘But I was grateful. I didn’t take it for granted.’
‘You used to look bonny in your blazer.’
‘It isn’t particularly enjoyable, education.’ Midgley had his head in his hands. ‘I had what he wanted. Why should that be enjoyable?’
‘Mark’s got his bronze medal,’ said Aunty Kitty. ‘Did you not ought to be ringing round?’
‘About the bronze medal?’
‘About your dad.’
‘I’ll wait till I’ve seen the doctor.’
It was half-past six.
‘They go on about these silicon chips, you’d think they’d get all these complaints licked first, somebody’s got their priorities wrong. Then he’s always been a right keen smoker has Frank. Now he’s paying the price.’
Midgley fell asleep.
‘Robert Donat had bronchitis,’ said Aunty Kitty.
‘MR MIDGLEY.’ The doctor shook his shoulder.
‘Denis,’ said Aunt Kitty, ‘it’s doctor.’
He was a pale young Pakistani, and for a moment Midgley thought he had fallen asleep in class and was being woken by a pupil.
‘Mr Midgley?’ He was grave and precise, 26 at the most.
‘Your father has had a stroke.’ He looked at his clipboard. ‘How severe it is hard to tell. When he was brought in he was suffering from hypothermia.’
Aunt Kitty gave a faint cry. It was a scourge that had been much in the news.
‘He must have fallen and been lying there, two days at least.’
‘I generally go over at weekends,’ said Midgley.
‘Pneumonia has set in. His heart is not strong. All things considered,’ he looked at the clipboard again, ‘we do not think he will last the night.’
As he went away he tucked the clipboard under his arm and Midgley saw there was nothing on it.
‘ONLY THREE PHONES and two of them duff. You wouldn’t credit it,’ said a fat man. ‘Say you were on standby for a transplant. It’d be just the same.’ He jingled his coins and a young man in glasses on the working phone put his head outside the helmet.
‘I’ve one or two calls to make,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Oh hell,’ said the fat man.
‘There’s a phone outside physio. Try there,’ said a passing nurse.
‘I’ll try there,’ said the fat man.
Midgley sat on.
‘Hello,’ said the young man brightly. ‘Dorothy? You’re a grandma.