It wasn’t going to happen.
Suddenly revolted by the sight of the half-finished crossword, which seemed trivial and offensive, I screwed the newspaper up into a ball and in the process knocked over the cold remains of my second cup of coffee. Then, after fetching a cloth and wiping away the stain, I fell into a frenzy of cleaning. I polished the table, dusted the shelves and attacked the skirting-board. I marshalled scourers and J-cloths, Pledge, Jif and Windolene. I went at it so ferociously that I started to take the paint off the window frames and the veneer off the coffee table. But even this wasn’t enough. I piled all the furniture from my sitting room into the hallway and vacuumed the carpet. I took a mop to the bathroom floor and polished the taps and the shower fittings and the mirrors. I cleaned out the lavatory bowl. Then I went round the flat with two big black dustbin liners, throwing in every out-of-date magazine, every wad of yellowing newsprint, every discarded note and scrap of paper. I didn’t stop until I came upon an unopened Jiffy bag, containing my parcel of books from the Peacock Press: then, seized by an absurd, almost hysterical curiosity, I tore it open and looked at the three volumes. I wanted to see something that would make me laugh.
There was a slender pamphlet entitled Architectural Beauties of Croydon, which boasted, according to the flyleaf, ‘three black and white illustrations’. Plinths! Plinths! Plinths!, by the Reverend J.W. Pottage, promised to be ‘the most accessible and humorous offering yet to fall from the pen of an author now internationally recognized as an authority in his field’. And the third book seemed to be yet another volume of war memoirs, bearing the somewhat enigmatic title, I Was ‘Celery’.
Before I’d had time to attach any significance to this, the telephone rang. I threw the book down at once and went to answer it. It was the hospital. They were putting Fiona on to a ventilator and if I wanted to talk to her I should come right away.
∗
‘There’s been a circulatory collapse,’ Dr Gillam explained. ‘We’ve been treating her with high concentrations of oxygen, but the level in her blood’s still very low. So we’ll have to try the ventilator. Once she’s on it, though, she won’t be able to talk. I thought you’d better see her first.’
She could barely talk even now.
She said: ‘I can’t understand it.’
And: ‘Thanks for being here.’
And: ‘You look tired.’
And: ‘What happened to the lasagne?’
I said: ‘You’ll be all right.’
And: ‘Are you comfortable?’
And: ‘The doctors here are very good.’
And: ‘You’ll be all right.’
It was nothing special, as conversations go. I suppose none of our conversations had ever been all that special. Especially special, I nearly wrote. I think I must be going to pieces.
∗
They said it would take about ninety minutes to set the ventilator up and fit all the necessary drips, and after that I could go back to see her. I lingered for a few minutes in the Relatives’ Room, a functional-enough waiting area with a few unyielding black vinyl chairs and a selection of newspapers and magazines which seemed slightly more upmarket than usual. Then I went to get a cup of coffee, and managed to find a canteen which I think was intended for the use of staff rather than visitors, although nobody seemed to object when I took my seat. I’d been there for a while, drinking black coffee and getting through two and a half bars of Fruit and Nut, when someone stopped by my table and said hello.
I glanced up. It was the nurse who had been looking after Fiona that morning.
‘How is she now?’ she asked.
‘Well, they’re putting her on a ventilator at the moment,’ I said. ‘I assume that means things are fairly serious.’
Her response was noncommittal. ‘She’ll be very well looked after.’
I nodded glumly, and she sat down in the chair opposite me.
‘How are you feeling, though?’
I hadn’t really thought about this. After a second or two I said, rather to my own surprise: ‘I’m not sure. Angry, if anything.’
‘Not with Dr Bishop, I hope.’
‘No, not with anyone specific. I’d say it was with fate, except that I don’t actually believe in fate. With the particular chain of circumstances, I suppose, which has brought –’ Suddenly it struck me that I hadn’t understood her remark. ‘Why should I be angry with Dr Bishop?’
‘Well, it probably would have been better if she’d been given the antibiotics last night,’ she said doubtfully. ‘She might at least have been more comfortable that way. Not that it ought to make that much difference, in the long run …’
‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘I thought she did have them last night. I mean, that’s what they told me was going to happen.’
I could see it dawning on her that she shouldn’t have told me. She must have assumed that I already knew.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I ought to be getting back to the ward …’
I followed her into the corridor but she wouldn’t answer any more of my questions, and I gave up when I caught sight of Dr Gillam out in the car park, wrapped up against the winter cold in her gloves and trench coat. I hurried to the main entrance and ran after her, catching up just as she was fumbling in her pocket for the car keys.
‘Can I have a word with you?’ I said.
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t want to keep you, if you’ve finished for the day …’
‘Never mind that. Was there something you wanted to know?’
‘Yes, there was.’ I hesitated. There seemed to be no tactful way of approaching this. ‘Is it true that Dr Bishop forgot to give Fiona her antibiotics last night?’
She said: ‘Where did you hear that?’
I said: ‘Is that what you were so angry about this morning?’
She said: ‘It might be a good idea if we went for a drink.’
As it was a Bank Holiday and the middle of the afternoon, all the pubs were shut. We were in a gloomy backwater of South West London. The best we could manage, in the end, was a bleak and characterless little café, rendered all the more tacky by the fact that it had obviously been designed to fool unwary customers into thinking that it was part of a well-known fast food chain. It called itself ‘Nantucket Fried Chicken’.
‘I think I’ve got the coffee,’ said Dr Gillam, after sipping from her paper cup. We swapped drinks.
‘No, this could be the tea,’ I said, testing it doubtfully. But we didn’t swap again. There didn’t seem much point.
‘You went through quite an ordeal last night,’ she began, after a few moments’ thought. ‘To tell the truth, what you went through was unacceptable. But I’m afraid I can’t apologize, because it happens all the time, and it would have happened anywhere else.’
‘It wasn’t quite what I … would have expected,’ I said, not sure where any of this was leading.
‘This is my last month as a doctor,’ she now announced, abruptly.
I nodded, more confused than ever.
‘I’m going to have a baby.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘I don’t mean that I’m pregnant. I mean that I might as well have a baby now, while I’m trying to decide what to do next. The fact is that I can’t really put up with this job any more. It depresses me too much.’
‘Why become a doctor in the first place,’ I asked, ‘if illness depresses you?’
‘Illness is only one of the things we’re fighting against.’
‘What are the others?’
She considered. ‘ “Interference” would be the best word, I suppose.’ She brushed this line of argument aside angrily. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t want this to turn into a political lecture. We should be talking about Fiona.’