The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (7 page)

Cleaning, you’ll appreciate, is not my job. It’s done in the night by Mrs. Ranatunga and her son Dennis, when I’m not here to supervise them. Mr. Smear the gynecologist, who is Mrs. Bathurst’s employer, is especially obnoxious if his desk doesn’t shine. They don’t want to pay out, you see, our doctors—but they still want the red-carpet treatment, they expect deference from me like they get from their medical students. Mr. Smear is an ambitious man, Mrs. Bathurst says: works all hours. He lives in Staines—quite near me, but in rather more style—and in the evenings he does abortions at a clinic in Slough. Sometimes when he comes to pick up his post from me I say, “Oh, look, doctor! Your hands are dirty.” He’ll look huffy, hold them up; but yes, there, there, I say. It’s amusing then, to see him wildly stare, and scrutinize his cuffs for blood spots. I take a moral line, you see. I’m not well paid, but I have that luxury.

Our other full-timer is Snapper, whom I mentioned before. He has his own little waiting room, where he puts his patients while their jabs take effect. His trick is to wait until he has one in the chair—a numb-lipped captive, mouth full of fingers—and then start voicing his opinions. Pakis out, that sort of thing: all the sophistication you expect from a man with letters after his name. I send his patients back into the world, their faces lopsided and their brains fizzing like bombs. Even if they had free speech, would they contradict him? He might hurt them next time.

One thing to be said for Snapper—he’s not as greedy as the others. As I said, he gave Mrs. Bathurst a cut-rate course of treatment.

“Do you have trouble with your teeth, Mrs. Bathurst?” Bettina asked: her usual tone, all gush and dote.

Mrs. Bathurst said, “When I was a girl they made me wear a brace. My gums have been tender since.” She put her hand up, as if she were blotting a bead of blood from her lip. She has long fingers, and horrible stumpy gnawed-off nails. I thought, it’s obvious; she’s one of those people who don’t like to talk about their childhood.

*   *   *

I
REMEMBER THE
day that Mrs. Bathurst appeared at the door, her CV in her bag: a woman of uncertain age, sallow, black hair graying, scooped back into wings and pinned with kirby grips. She wore a dark cape—which she carried well, because of her height. She’s worn it all summer though: in August, people stare. Perhaps it was part of her uniform once, when she was a hospital nurse. It’s the sort of thing that’s too good to throw away.

It was late June before she gave me a smile and said, “You can call me Liz.” I tried, but I didn’t feel easy; for me, I’m afraid, she’ll be Mrs. Bathurst forever. Still, I was pleased at the time, that she seemed to want to get on good terms. You see, I’ve had some problems in my personal life—it’s too complicated to go into here—and I suppose I was looking out for an older woman, somebody I could confide in.

One night I said, will you come out? Let’s go somewhere! I towed her along to a little French place I used to go to with my boyfriend. It’s a gem—old-fashioned, very cheap, and probably the last place in London where the waiters are authentically unpleasant in the Parisian style. I can’t say the occasion was relaxed. Mrs. Bathurst didn’t seem interested in the food. She spent the evening perched on the edge of her seat, staring at what the waiters were carrying through, and sniffing. When the next table ordered steak tartare, she looked at me: “People eat that?”

“Apparently.”

“What,” she said, “anybody?”

“If they can face it.”

“Right,” she said. She frowned. “I never knew you could get that.”

“You’ve never lived,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “I have.”

The bill came, and I said “My treat—really, Liz, honestly.” Right, thanks, she said: yanked her cape from the hook by the door and fluttered off into the night.

I wanted to like her, you see, but she’s one of those people who can’t take simple friendship where it’s offered. She was more taken with Bettina—though as far as I could see then, they had nothing in common. Bettina came whining to me: “That woman’s always hanging about in my basement.”

“Doing what?”

She pouted. “Offering to help me.”

“Not a crime.”

“Don’t you think she’s a lesbian?”

“How would I know?”

“I’ve seen you drinking tea with her.”

“Yes, but God blast it. Anyway, Mrs. Isn’t she?”

“Oh, Mrs.,” Bettina said scornfully. “Probably she’s not. She just thinks it sounds more respectful.”

“Respectable, you mean.”

“Anyway. Lesbians often get married.”

“Do they?”

“Definitely.”

I said, “I bow to your worldly wisdom.”

“Look at her!” Bettina said. “There’s something wrong there.”

“Thyroid?” I said. “Could be. She’s thin. And her hands shake.”

Bettina nodded. “Eyes bulge. Mm. Could be.”

I feel sorry for both of them. Bettina is on some sort of Grand Tour, earning her way around the old world—she’ll stop off and take blood in various European cities, then fly home and settle, she says. Mrs. Bathurst’s own relatives live abroad, and she never sees them.

After our meal out—a disaster, probably my fault—I’d have suggested something else—film, whatever—except that, as I’ve said, I rent a flat in Staines, thirty-five minutes from Waterloo, and Mrs. Bathurst has recently moved from Highgate to Kensal Green. What’s it like? I asked her. A hole, she said. Midsummer, she took a fortnight off. She didn’t want it, she said, was dreading it in fact—but Smear was going on a sponsored conference, and she wasn’t wanted.

The day she was to finish work, she sat with me in my cave, her eyes hidden in her palms. “Mrs. Bathurst,” I said, “maybe London’s not for you. It’s not—I don’t find it a kind place myself, it’s not a place for women alone.” Especially, I didn’t say, when they get to your age. After a bit—perhaps she’d been thinking about what I was saying—she took her hands away from her face.

“Move on,” she said, “that’s the way. Move on, every year or two. That way, you’ll always meet somebody, won’t you?”

My heart went out to her. I scribbled my address. “Come over, some night. I’ve got a sofa, I can put you up.”

She didn’t want to take it, and I pressed it into her hand. What a cold hand she had: cold like an old buried brick. I revised my opinion on the state of her thyroid gland.

*   *   *

S
HE DIDN’T COME,
of course. I didn’t mind—and I mind less, in view of what I know about her now—but I very pointedly didn’t ask her what she’d done with her holiday. Her first day back, she looked drained. I said, “What have you been doing, moonlighting?”

She dropped her head, gnawed her lip, turned her big pale face away. She annoyed me, at times; it was as if she didn’t understand the English language, the disclaimers and the catchphrases we all have to take on, all of us, wherever we come from. “Anyway,” I said, “you’ve missed all the excitement, Mrs. Bathurst. A week ago we had a break-in.” I’d turned up one morning, and there was Mrs. Ranatunga and Dennis. Mrs. Ranatunga was in tears, wringing her J Cloth between her hands. There was a police car outside.

“Could you credit it?” Mrs. Bathurst said. She looked more animated. “Drugs?”

“Yes, that’s what Shinbone said. They must have thought we kept stuff on the premises. They ransacked the basement, there was glass all over the place. They practically ripped the fridge door off. They took Bettina’s samples, what would they have wanted with them? What would they do with tubes of blood?”

“Can’t imagine.” Mrs. Bathurst shook her head, as if the human condition was beyond her. “I’ll go down and commiserate with Bettina,” she whispered. “Poor little girl. What a shock.”

*   *   *

O
NE
S
ATURDAY, AFTER
a long morning at Harley Street, I thought I’d stay in town and go shopping. By two o’clock I was worn out from the heat and the crush. I got on a tour bus, pretended to be a Finnish monoglot, and rested my legs on the empty seat next to me. There was thunder in the air, a clammy heat. Tourists sat dazed on the traffic islands and in the parks. The trees seemed wetly green, foliage hanging in great clumped masses, slow-rustling and heavy. Near Buckingham Palace there was a bed of geraniums—so scarlet, as if the earth had bled through the pavements; I saw the Guardsmen wilting in sympathy, fainting at their posts.

That night it was too hot to sleep. The night following I dreamed that I was in Harley Street. In my dream it was Monday; this is what people usually dream, who work all week. I was coming, or going: the pavement was stained—sunrise or sunset—and I saw that all the Harley Street railings had been filed to points. I had a companion in the street, matching me step for step. I said, look what they’ve done to the railings. Yes, very nasty points, she said. Then a big hand came out, and pushed me against them.

Next day I was groggy, missed my usual train and arrived at Waterloo twelve minutes late. Twelve minutes—what is it, against the length of a life? It’s the start of a foul day, that’s what it is—because then comes the scrimmage on the Bakerloo line, and Regent’s Park station with the lifts broken down. When I made it to the top I’d got to sprint—otherwise Smear and Shinbone would have their heads through my hatch, tapping their watch faces: Oh, where is Todd? I turned into Harley Street. And what did I see? Only Liz Bathurst heel-toeing it along. I caught up, put my hand on her arm: Late, Mrs. Bathurst! This isn’t like you! No sleep, she said, no rest. You too? I said. My dream was washed away; easily, I melted into sympathy. She nodded. Up all night, she said.

But in the next three, four, five seconds, I began to feel vastly irritated. I can’t put it better than that. God knows, Bettina wears me down, so amiable and dumb, and so do the doctors, but in that moment I realized that Mrs. Bathurst was wearing me down even more. “Liz,” (and I snapped at her, I admit it) “why do you go around the way you do? That cape—dump it, can’t you? Burn it, bury it, send it to a car-boot sale. You bloody depress me, woman. Get your hair done. Buy some emery boards, file your nails.”

My nails, she said, my hair? She turned to me, face sallow and innocent as the moon. And then without warning—and I realize I must have offended her—drew her arm back, and thumped her fist between my breasts. I careered backward, right into the railings. I felt them dent into my flesh, one bar against my spine and one behind each shoulder blade. Mrs. Bathurst flew off down the street.

I put my hands behind me, wrapping my fingers for a moment around those evil flaking spikes; levered myself away, and staggered after her. If I’d had any faith in our doctors, I might have asked one of them to look at my bruises. But as it was, I just felt shaken up. And sorry, because I’d been brutal—my fatigue was to blame.

All that day I felt raw. The noises of our house seemed amplified. When the doctors scuffed in and out, I could hear their Lobbs scraping the carpets. I could hear Gland’s wheezing and puffing; the snarls of her patients, and the sobs of the patients of Smear, as he pushed in with his cold speculum, while Mrs. Bathurst stood by. I heard the whine and grind of Snapper’s drill, and the chink of steel instruments against steel dishes.

I said to Bettina, is it Monday all day? Yes, she said; she was so stupid she thought it was a normal question. Ah, I said, then Dr. Lobotomy will be in, 2:30–8:30, first floor second door on the left. I think I’ll get a brain operation, or a major tranquilizer or something. I was really nasty to Mrs. Bathurst today. I laughed at her for wearing that cape.

Bettina turned her strawberry mouth down, just at the corners. Her big eyes—unripe fruits—were bulgy with incomprehension. “I know it’s old-fashioned,” she said, “but I don’t see that it’s funny.”

Should I have noticed at this point, that they’d got together, left me in the cold? I lacked insight this summer—that’s how Lobotomy would put it. Yet when the patients come in I seem to see straight through them to the bone. I can hear their hearts flutter, hear their respiration, their digestion, estimate their tick-over speed and say whether they’ll be with us for Christmas. It’s September now, and I still feel wrecked by London—I am hot, filthy, desperate when I get back to Staines for a bath or shower. For comfort I retain this picture in my mind: one day I’ll get further out of town. Somewhere just big enough for me. Somewhere small and quiet.

Next day I bought a bunch of lilies as I came through Waterloo. I pressed them into Mrs. Bathurst’s hands. “Sorry,” I said. “About the cruel remarks I made.” She nodded, absently. She left them on the table in the hall, didn’t put them in water; I could hardly do it myself, could I? That evening she and Bettina left together. On her way out she just casually scooped them up, without looking at them. I’ll never know if they went home with her or went into a bin.

Next day, Bettina came up from the basement. She stood inside my door, leaning on the frame. She looked faintly bruised and blurred, as if her outline had become fuzzy. “I’d like to talk to you,” she said.

“Of course,” I said, rather coldly. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”

“Not here,” she said, looking around.

“Meet me at one-fifteen,” I said. I told her how to find the French place. They’re even cheaper at lunchtime.

I was there first. I drank some water. I didn’t think she’d come, thought she’d lose the address, lose interest; her problems were easily soluble, after all. One-thirty, she came flouncing in—cheeks pink with self-importance, coloring when the waiter took her cheap little rain-proof jacket. They brought the menu; she took it without seeing it; she pushed her curly fringe from her forehead and—as I could have forecast—burst into tears. It’s been a long, difficult summer. It came to me what Mrs. Bathurst said, about the need to move on: I said, “I suppose you’ll not be with us much longer, Bets?”

She locked her eyes onto mine; this surprised me, to see those great blue-violet orbs assume a purpose. “You don’t realize, do you?” she said. “My God, when were you born? Don’t you realize I’m seeing Bathurst, most nights now?”

Seeing, indeed. I kept a very judicious silence: that’s what you should do, if you don’t quite know what people mean. Then she did something odd: her elbows on the table, she put her fingers to the back of her neck, and seemed to massage the scalp line there, and raise her roseate hair. It was as if she were trying to show me something. A moment, when her eyes challenged mine, and then her hair fell back against her short white neck. She shivered; she drew one hand across her shoulder, slowly, and allowed it to graze her breast, brush her nipple. One of the old waiters passed and scowled at me, as if he were seeing something he didn’t like.