The Laying on of Hands - Alan Bennett [46]
As Midgley took the phone she took out her handkerchief and rubbed it over her lips, and safely outside the hospital, her ear.
UNCLE ERNEST had said on the phone that if this was going to go on he wasn’t sure he could run to the fares, but he turned up in the late afternoon along with Hartley.
He went and sat with his brother for a bit, got down and looked under the bed and figured out how the mechanism worked that lifted and lowered it and finally stood up and said, ‘Gillo, Frank,’ which was what he used to say when they went out cycling between the wars. It meant ‘hurry up’.
‘It’s Frank all over,’ said Aunty Kitty, ‘going down fighting. He loved life.’
There were a couple of newcomers in the waiting room, an oldish couple.
‘It’s their eldest daughter,’ whispered Aunty Kitty. ‘She was just choosing some new curtains in Schofields. Collapsed. Suspected brain haemorrhage. Their other son’s a vet.’
They trailed down the long corridor to the lift.
‘It’s a wonder to me,’ said Uncle Ernest, ‘how your Aunty Kitty’s managed to escape strangulation all these years. Was he coloured, this doctor?’
‘Which?’ said Midgley.
‘That said he was on his last legs.’
Midgley reluctantly admitted he was.
‘That explains it,’ said the old railwayman.
‘Dad,’ said Hartley.
‘What does that mean, “Dad”?’ said his father.
‘It means I’m vice-chairman of the community relations council. It means we’ve got one in the office and he’s a tip-top accountant. It means we all have to live with one another in this world.’ He pumped the button of the lift.
‘I’ll not come again,’ said Uncle Ernest. ‘It gets morbid.’
‘We’ve just got to play it by ear,’ said Hartley.
‘You won’t have this performance with me,’ said the old man. ‘Come once and have done.’
‘Shall I drop you?’ said Hartley as the doors opened.
‘I don’t want you to go out of your way.’
‘No, but shall I drop you?’
‘Press G,’ said Uncle Ernest.
The lift doors closed.
MIDGLEY WAS SITTING with his father when the plump night nurse came on.
‘I wondered if you’d be on tonight.’ He read her tab. ‘Nurse Lightfoot.’
‘Waiting for me, were you? No change.’ She took a tissue and wiped the old man’s mouth. ‘He doesn’t want to leave us, does he?’ She picked up the vase of carnations from the window sill. ‘Oxygen,’ she said and took them outside.
Later, when she had made him a cup of tea and Aunty Kitty had gone home for the second night, he was sitting at the bedside but got up when she started to give his father a bed bath.
‘You’re like one another.’
He stared out of the window, even moved to avoid seeing the reflection.
‘No,’ he said.
‘You are. It’s a compliment. He has a nice face.’ She sponged under his arms.
‘What are you?’ she said.
‘How do you mean?’ He turned just as she had folded back the sheets and was sponging between his legs. Quickly he looked out of the window again.
‘What do you do?’
‘Teacher. I’m a teacher.’ He wanted to go and sit in the waiting room.
‘What was he?’
‘Plumber.’
‘He’s got lovely hands. Real ladies’ hands.’
And it was true. She had finished and the soft white hands of his father lay over the sheet.
‘That happens in hospitals. People’s hands change.’ She held his father’s hand. Midgley wondered if he could ask her to hold his. Probably. She looked even more of a mess than the night before.
‘Is there anything you want to ask?’
‘Yes,’ said Midgley.
‘If there