Smut: Stories (7 page)

‘I’m going to ask you one or two questions to determine the degree of care Mother requires. Is Mother incontinent?’

‘Only when she wants to be.’

‘Does she soil herself?’

‘When it suits her.’

‘What is she saying?’ the old lady said. ‘Ask me not her.’

‘I have to do everything for her,’ said Lois.

‘Interesting point,’ Ballantyne’s voice comes from the back of the class.

‘When anyone says “I have to do everything for her” what they generally mean is that they have to do one thing for her.’

‘She has men,’ the old lady said, ‘in droves.’

Ballantyne ignores this.

‘It’s also interesting,’ he continues, ‘that though a daughter can say “I have to do everything for her” about her aged mother, at the other end of life a mother would never say of her infant child “I have to do everything for her”. Why do we take the helpless condition of infancy without complaint but not that of senility? Culley, any thoughts?’

Culley considered.

‘The shit smells worse for a start.’

There was a shout of laughter in which Ballantyne does not join.

‘It’s a serious point. So it does. On you go.’

Metcalf persevered asking his textbook questions to do with memory, mobility and waking in the night but getting nowhere. It’s plain that, mother and daughter, these are two awkward women. The mother wants to stay in her home; the daughter can’t cope and wants her in a different sort of home. If they were in the least bit fond of one an other it could be heart-rending but they’re not.

‘Have you and Mother ever got on?’ he asks.

‘We get on,’ says the mother. ‘What makes you think we don’t get on?’

‘You’ve just called her a cow.’

‘She’s my daughter. I can call her what I like.’

Out of the blue Metcalf said, ‘Who is the prime minister?’

‘That feller,’ she says. ‘I know but I’m not telling you.’

‘Can you take five from seven?’

‘Why should I want to do that?’

Metcalf turns back to the daughter. ‘You see Mrs Murgatroyd, it’s pretty well accepted that elderly patients do better in familiar surroundings and this after all is Mother’s home.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ the mother chips in. ‘It may look like my home and it may look like my street but they can do wonders with scenery nowadays. Quite frankly I think I’m in a home already only they’re not telling me.’

Metcalf writes something down as Lois smiles understandingly.

‘What it is,’ says Miss Beckinsale, ‘is that she wants a lodger.’

The class sits up.

With no mention of lodgers in the prep notes this, Mrs Donaldson knew, was another dart from Miss Beckinsale’s personal quiver.

‘She’s lost her husband and now she wants a lodger.’

‘I don’t want a lodger,’ said Lois. ‘There’s no room for lodgers.’

‘That depends how you sleep,’ said Miss Beckinsale. Somebody laughed. Mrs Donaldson looked. Somebody else was grinning.

‘They’ll be doing that thing,’ said her mother.

‘What thing?’ said Metcalf. ‘That thing they do,’ said Miss Beckinsale. ‘Young people, old people’ (a small whoop from somewhere); though it was a thing Miss Beckinsale normally never mentioned.

‘You mean,’ said Lois, ‘the thing you had to do before you had me?’

‘Don’t be disgusting. I never did that. I never did that with anybody. I was a Sunday-school teacher. You did. You do.’ And she banged on the table.

None of this was typical. Whatever her riffs and ramblings, Miss Beckinsale has always given sex a wide berth.

Liking banging the table she now does it some more.

Mrs Donaldson always has a bottle of water in her bag and under cover of the commotion and hidden by her bag she bends down and pours some of it under the table.

‘Where did your husband fit in?’ Metcalf is saying to the old lady. ‘Did you get on?’

‘Ask her.’

The water crept across the floor.

Mrs Donaldson smiled sweetly at Metcalf.

‘I think Mother’s had a little accident.’

‘I never have,’ said Miss Beckinsale, though whether as Mother or herself wasn’t plain.

‘She doesn’t know she does it,’ said Lois. ‘She should be in care.’

‘I’ll get a nurse,’ said Metcalf. ‘To wipe up the wee. It’s all right for a nurse to do that?’

‘Yes,’ said Ballantyne wearily. ‘It’s all right for a nurse to do that.’

As the class breaks up and while Miss Beckinsale is ostentatiously ‘coming down’ Ballantyne takes Mrs Donaldson aside.

‘Very good. Very good, though I’m not sure it entirely worked…Did Violet seem demented to you? I thought she was too much on the ball. Did she wet herself?’

‘She didn’t think so,’ said Mrs Donaldson.

‘Oh dear. Poor thing. Still, she is getting on and, though it’s hardly a clinical judgment, these days she’s often away with the fairies.’

‘One thing I can’t help noticing’ – and he rested his hand lightly in the small of Mrs Donaldson’s back, which she couldn’t help noticing either – ‘I can’t help noticing how, excellent as these scenarios always are, you perversely almost (because it’s so unlike the real you) always choose to play the unsympathetic line – the uncaring daughter, the unforgiving widow. Your ladies are quite hard.’

‘I’m not sure I can do emotion,’ said Mrs Donaldson.

‘In life,’ which was bold for Ballantyne, ‘or just in the lecture room? Are you still grieving?’

‘Grieving,’ said Mrs Donaldson. ‘Who for?’

‘Mr Donaldson.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Possibly.’

‘Perhaps,’ and his hand lingered on her back, ‘perhaps I could take you out to supper sometime. It might take your mind off things.’

‘What took him so long?’ said Delia. ‘I hope you said yes.’

Mrs Donaldson had said yes and with some relief since the invitation did at least prove that if her escapade with Laura and Andy was common knowledge it had not reached the ears of Dr Ballantyne.

This was the opposite of the truth. Having asked a student if she had ever seen anyone dead and received the reply ‘only my hamster’, Ballantyne had taken her and a couple of novices to mortality down to the mortuary for a view of some of the recently departed. Afterwards he had felt obliged to take the trio for a drink, which was partly restorative, but also because he had a review board coming up and he needed to plump up his entry in the staff/student interface box.

IT HAD BEEN A STILTED OCCASION (‘Tell me, Rosemary, what is it that draws you to the bowel, which is normally a male preserve?’) but the day had been saved by Nigel, yet another surgical aspirant who thought the prostate was a growth area (‘Joke. Ha ha.’) and who, pursuant to his chosen speciality, breezily recounted legends of ancient sex. It was in the course of this rather tacky performance that Lockwood, who hadn’t yet spoken and who in turn was thinking of his interface box and hoping Ballantyne wouldn’t write him down as lacking in social skills, had felt he must make a contribution and so had told the doctor the rumours about Mrs Donaldson.

Both the other students knew apparently though Rosemary said she didn’t believe it, and Nigel said Laura had told him so herself. Ballantyne said what business was it of theirs anyway and was surprised they hadn’t got better things to talk about. There was a pause.

‘Tell me,’ Ballantyne said, ‘where do you stand on the new polyclinics?’

Betraying nothing to the students (‘Mrs Donaldson is a professional through and through’) and suppressing his longing for more information, Ballantyne far from being shocked found the news oddly encouraging. He had made his continuing interest in Mrs Donaldson clumsily and (as he knew himself) off-puttingly clear. That he had taken it no further could be put down to his own awkwardness where women were concerned but also to his timidity in the face of the self-possession and even superiority the widow radiated. Mrs Donaldson had frightened him a little. Now he was no longer frightened. When it came down to it she turned out to be no different from anybody else. He had been given a licence. They would have supper.

Reassured about Ballantyne, Mrs Donaldson had still been left in no doubt that Miss Beckinsale was in the know and by the sound of it everybody else. So she asked Delia outright, who it turns out had never been in any doubt.

‘It’s not fair,’ Delia said. ‘I’m ten years younger than you. Sex with the children, supper with the supervisor, where am I going wrong?’

‘It wasn’t sex,’ said Mrs Donaldson.

‘What was it then?’

So she told her, with the telling – and she realised this is what she had been missing – interrupted by shrieks of laughter from them both.

True, Mrs Donaldson edited the story, saying nothing about her nights by the wall, but telling the tale did not rob her adventure of its allure but rather the other way about, so much so that when she got home that night she went straightaway to the waste bin and delving among the dry teabags, cold rice and tomato skins she thankfully retrieved the screwed-up scrap of paper Ollie had left her.

AND SO IN DUE COURSE the new lodgers moved in, with two weeks’ rent paid in advance but no mention of any other conditions of tenancy or the flexibility of either party in the event of non-payment.

As lodgers they were even less obtrusive than Andy and Laura, seldom seen in the kitchen for instance, with Ollie seeming to subsist largely on takeaway pizzas.

Gwen was predictably unkeen.

‘Does she ever speak? I’ve been round twice now and both times she’s just scuttled off upstairs. He’s chatty enough but what’s with the hat? They look like buskers.’

‘They’re quiet enough,’ her mother said. ‘I scarcely know they’re there.’

‘A change from the last two. What’s he studying?’

‘Fashion, I think.’

‘Fashion? Well, I suppose you ought to be thankful he’s not gay.’

‘There’d be nothing wrong with that,’ said Mrs Donaldson primly. ‘I’ve been someone gay at the hospital.’

Gwen groaned.

‘What for?’

‘Fun,’ Mrs Donaldson wanted to say. ‘A laugh. Or a penance for having landed the world with such a joyless creature as you.’

And yet, though she didn’t care for her daughter, she knew that some of this resentment could be put down to the fact that Gwen was right.

What did she think she was doing at the hospital? What was she doing sheltering these two babes in the wood?

It was unseemly. Bold face though she put on, it wasn’t her at all. But that was why she did it. It wasn’t her.

No sooner were the lodgers installed than out came the eiderdown and Mrs Donaldson went back on sentry duty. It was an unrewarding tryst generally, with scarcely a sound coming from next door and so quiet that on one occasion Mrs Donaldson spent five minutes listening to them pumping away before she realised it was the sound of her own heart. Occasionally there was a muted wail which she took to be Geraldine but whether it was of grief or ecstasy it was hard to tell; it might have been sheer tedium.

For her part Mrs Donaldson began to wonder if the hint Ollie dropped at the start had not been a hint at all. Had she just misunderstood? Or was it a con, a way of getting a foot in the door and as soon as they were settled in not to be referred to? After all it wasn’t something she could actually mention and it was not long before she began to feel she was making a fool of herself twice over.

Still there were less momentous contacts. Meeting her in the kitchen one evening Ollie said, ‘Can I draw you sometime? Though I don’t even know your name.’

‘Jane,’ said Mrs Donaldson. ‘If you like…The drawing. How? When do you want to do it?’

‘We can do it now, if you want…Jane.’

So she sat down at the kitchen table while he did a very creditable drawing of her plus some smaller sketches, sitting like a small boy with the tip of his tongue between his teeth.

‘There’s a tradition of artists drawing their landladies or painting them. Did you know that?’

‘No,’ said Mrs Donaldson who was still not fond of the landlady category.

‘Mrs Mounter,’ said Ollie, all the time sketching. ‘She was the landlady of a painter called Harold Gilman. Mind you she was an old lady.’

At which point Geraldine came into the kitchen and went straight out again.

‘Enough already,’ said Ollie. ‘Only can I ask you again?’

‘HOW DO YOU WANT TO DO THIS?’ said Ollie. He and Geraldine were sitting side by side at the foot of the bed, his hand holding hers. She looked unhappy.

‘Shall I give you a shout when we’re ready?’

As Mrs Donaldson turned to go Ollie said, ‘Do you keep your clothes on?’

‘Oh, I think so,’ said Mrs Donaldson. ‘I think it’s probably easier, don’t you?’

‘That’s what I thought.’

There had obviously been some discussion on the point.

‘Gerry was bothered you might just dive in.’

‘Me?’ said Mrs Donaldson. ‘Oh no. I’m just…’ and she was going to say a fly on the wall but that was a bit close to the truth.

‘I’m just an observer.’

The long-awaited call had come about an hour before. They had spent most of the evening in their room and hearing Geraldine’s voice she took them to be arguing. But Ollie had come down to the kitchen as she was making some scrambled eggs on toast. She had given him some and offered to do some more for Geraldine only eggs weren’t her thing, apparently.

As she washed up and Ollie was drying he suddenly said, ‘What about tonight? I know we’ve paid the rent but we could bank it. Andy and Laura used to do that, didn’t they?’ Mrs Donaldson agreed that they had, though without saying it was only the once. So while Ollie made Geraldine a cup of camomile tea she went back upstairs.

Ollie gave her a shout when the two of them were safely in bed and Mrs Donaldson went in and sat on the dressing-table stool.

Neither of them seemed in any hurry to get started, the boy sitting up against the bedhead with the sheet stretched across his flat belly just below his navel. Geraldine on the other hand had snuggled right down in the bed, peeping shyly at Mrs Donaldson over the top of the sheet.

‘How are things in the café?’ said Mrs Donaldson. ‘Is it all organic?’