The Convalescent Page 14

  Eventually I excuse myself and go upstairs to find Kenneth. Some kind of apology is called for. But he is showing the Gardener boy his computer. I’ll speak to him later. His eyes tell me not to worry. Or not to fuss. Or not to appear again until I have found another level. His eyes tell me many things.

  CHAPTER TEN

  To those unfamiliar with such personalities, the Reverend Walsh’s behaviour in the Montgomery would have been hard to understand. His heavy juddering walk down the long corridors suggested many things (as his personality seemed to come at you, in obscure flashes, from many angles). One who has just heard it rumoured that all, himself included, are damned, and is looking for a party with his fellow damned. One who has just heard a joke that unlocks the riddle of existence and is looking to see if others have the wit to appreciate it. One who has just heard that a charismatic stranger has been and gone and left his mark, and is resentfully wondering what he has missed. One who is confident that his pride will allow him to survive every abandonment. Doors he knew to be the doors of cupboards he opened and, after a cursory glance, shut again. (The doors of the lounges too he was in the habit of opening and shutting in this way.) At the intersections of corridors he often stood musing, as though the fact, the idea, of intersection was growing in symbolic power for him. In the lounges he sat reading or writing, paying no attention to the elderly whatsoever, exhausting them with his indifference. Or he came in with his hands behind his back and addressed them on a wide range of subjects, exhausting them with his enthusiasm. With visitors he fancied he would stroll in the grounds, diverting them with tales of local history, even (who knows) with tales of life in the Montgomery. He was frequently present at reunions and reconciliations, grandparents and grandchildren, parents and children, coming together in his presence (smiling gratefully – sometimes sentimentally – for hours afterwards). His services at Christmas and Easter were famous for their mixture of tact and vigour, humour and elevation. He seemed to know what it was like to be very old, or, if he didn’t, he was able – from his makeshift pulpit in a corner of the large east lounge – to conceal his ignorance very convincingly. He had had a small book of his sermons, “Sermons for All Seasons”, published privately, and copies were available at all times on the oak table in the entrance hall. He delighted in signing it for anyone who bought it, and each time he did so (leaning heavily on the oak table with his old fashioned fountain pen), he would remark that had he not been a minister he would have been a writer of some kind. He had been overweight all his adult life, but he exploited his portliness so that it seemed the source of his strength. (One old lady, who had been wasting away for years, said that when the flesh left her it went straight to the Reverend Walsh.) Each year he went on holiday with matron to France or Italy. And generations of patients – a generation of patients being eighteen months – had suspected that on these holidays he and matron slept together, goring and refreshing each other in turn.

  Newcomers to the Montgomery fascinated him; he would talk to them until satisfied that he could learn no more.

  William knew that the minister was hoping to corner him. Now he heard him about twenty yards behind him in one of the corridors, brogues thundering and squeaking. Now he saw him about twenty yards before him, starting to smile. So far he had been able to limit their meetings to brief exchanges: there had always been a patient to help, a tray to carry somewhere without delay, a trolley to return to the kitchen. There was one thing though which he couldn’t do anything about: the minister’s habit of playing the part of the supervisor and sitting nearby while he talked or read to someone. He overheard much of Prester John in this way, and the beginning of Mansfield Park. Sometimes he appeared to be listening intently, sometimes to be abstracted. But he was there. His arrivals and departures, like matron’s, were abrupt and unannounced. There he would be, smiling enigmatically in the doorway. Or already seated, humming. Or standing up to go, brushing at his trousers as if he couldn’t rid them of crumbs. Once William read a whole chapter of Prester John to Miss Black while she slept, knowing that by the time he came to the end of it the minister would have gone. And once, for the same reason, he questioned Mrs Roberts endlessly about her love of butterflies.

  Was it fear? Why should he be afraid? He wasn’t afraid of matron, though he didn’t like her – her deviousness a corruption of sensuality, her bright remoteness, her aspirations to a command beyond ordinary command – but he did think that he was afraid of the minister. Was it because he was educated, cultured even, and it was years since William had spoken to anyone like that? (Talking to him, he would have to think clearly, carefully.) Because he was disinclined to accept a person’s account of himself at face value, having – or priding himself on having – a nose for lies and evasions? Because he regarded the Montgomery as a most significant terminus? (Why had Sophie, Margaret, William, the others, all ended up there?) There were many questions. So although, head down with his duties, William was able to avoid the minister, he was affected by him nonetheless, running up against him in his mind, shadowed by him in spirit.

  It was clear that May and Margaret also feared him. They helped each other out when he was around. If May was detained by him, Margaret would say that she was required elsewhere, and vice versa. William didn’t know them well enough to speak to them about him. He could only speculate. Once, though, he had noticed the minister with his arm round Margaret’s waist. Even from thirty yards away and from behind her distress had been obvious. He had rescued her, running up and saying that a patient was calling for her; and then, still running, he had gone off himself on an invented pretext.

  Sophie alone did not fear him. She was impertinent to him – an impertinence he expected and, indeed, was at pains to provoke. He didn’t have any other way with her. Passing her in the corridors, he would say: “Well, Sophie, what should I be doing today?” or “Well, Sophie, where have I erred today?” Sometimes she didn’t bother to reply, but, when she did, she displayed the sharpness and calculation of the licensed rebel. “God has work for idle hands to do, Reverend. Don’t tell me you don’t know?” “Is this how you take your exercise, Reverend, walking the corridors?” “You could pray for the soul of Miss Jackson in the south lounge, Reverend. You may not have noticed, but she’s fading.” “Which lounge do you plan to die in, Reverend?”

  Watching Sophie with the minister, William was ashamed. That was how it should be. She might have youth on her side (he, William, was too old to be anyone’s pet subversive), but her aggression was admirable. It wasn’t easily managed, though: the line between licensed abuse and outright abuse was indistinct. Several times he held his breath, wondering if she was going to overbalance, draw blood at last. She always caught herself in time, however, though it was apparent that she saw less and less point in doing so. William would come upon her in a corner somewhere and notice a dark puckering (as from suddenly intensified purpose) about her mouth and eyes. And he would be moved, knowing that she knew she was about to come of age.

  But the minister caught up with William eventually. It was after lunch one day. They were in the west lounge, but there was no one else there, and William could think of no excuse for leaving. The minister was tapping a newspaper against his left hand and looking round, scrutinising the empty chairs, as though from the disposition of the cushions something significant could be learned about how the elderly had passed the morning.

  “You won’t be finding much time for writing, William,” he remarked. “Whenever I see you, you’re working. And matron confirms my impression that you’re commendably diligent and industrious.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” William answered. “I’d come to a halt anyway.”

  “Writer’s block?”

  “Something like that. Even with the best the spirit sometimes freezes.”

  “Indeed.” The minister nodded, sitting down.

  “Not that I’m classing myself with the best. Oh no …”

  “You looked bloodless when you came for th
e interview,” the minister said, smiling, but whether at his own forwardness, the impression he thought it would make, or at the memory of William on that occasion wasn’t clear. “Do you know that? In spite of your tan, you looked bloodless.”

  William had guessed that this would be the minister’s way. Either you accepted his theories as part of a robust game he never tired of playing, or you were roused, you took exception to them. Even as he was considering the first option, William found that he had taken up the second. Or that it had been chosen for him, for it was as if, at the last moment, an impulse of equability and tolerance was overtaken, arrested, by one of outrage. He gave up pretending to rearrange the cushions and, sitting down, faced the minister. His mouth was dry.

  “Bloodless? That suggests many things. Ill health, indecision, cowardice, apathy …”

  “It wasn’t any of these I had in mind when we saw you that day,” the minister said, speaking – as out of a sudden judiciousness – very slowly. “The impression I got was of a man who had been stalled, who was merely going through the motions of finding his way. Let me not talk of the blind leading the blind, for clearly no one was leading you, but that was how it appeared. You looked as if you were proceeding on trust, step by step in almost blind faith. It was most touching.”

  “And did matron find it touching too?” William asked. He had hoped to sound sarcastic, but it came out sounding more forlorn than sarcastic.

  “I dare say she did. Not that I can vouch for her.”

  “Why don’t you try?” William suggested, wondering if he had been avoiding the minister until he felt that he was ready for him. Did that mean that he was ready now? Would this mixture of baldness and hostility be enough? Or was the minister, a tactician in debate as he was in the lounges and corridors, only allowing him to think that it was? “Go on.”

  “Why should you want me to? Do you have doubts about how your little story came over?”

  “My little story?”

  “Well, there was such delicacy. You told us, you will remember, that your mother had been murdered. Now I don’t need to point out that it’s not every day that one meets someone whose mother has been murdered. Matron was astonished, I know. So why not moved, also?”

  “It makes for a certain bloodlessness, I suppose, having one’s mother murdered,” William said, speaking so quietly that he might have been addressing himself.

  “Sure, sure.”

  “A certain bloodlessness,” William said again.

  “Do you think it’s any coincidence that you’ve come to work here?”

  “You’ll have to explain yourself, I think.”

  “As I think I said before, you’re a man of some culture. Given, then …”

  “What if I told you that I’d not read a book in years? And that it’s an effort to read newspapers?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. Such a suspicion was implicit, in my description of you as bloodless.” The minister was smiling again. “A bloodless man doesn’t climb mountains, doesn’t read, doesn’t write, doesn’t have love affairs. But can I go back to my question? Your mother was murdered; and now you’re here. Any connection?”

  If he had not then been assailed by scenes from his mother’s final years, William might have answered immediately and in the negative. He was suddenly sure, however, that he had visited her only once towards the end. And his feeling was that this was because she had been too tolerant. Too forbearing. Had she been less so, he would have visited her more often. Regularly perhaps. Might he even have tried to stay? For the whip, to be derided? For a true picture of his fall? Was this why he now pictured her as he did, or why she now came to him as she did: in pain, in wrath, drinking and accusing? Why had he the illusion of eavesdropping on a woman he had never allowed himself to know, or who had never allowed herself to be known? From the scenes, which as if from some bitter alternative biography came to him and played themselves in his mind, it appeared that sometimes she took herself out of the house and out of the garden, even, and into the fields – the far fields, too, where there were copses and crows and strange boulders – there exhausting herself with cries and curses.

  “Are you all right, William?” the minister asked, leaning towards him. “Yes,” William said, speaking then in a rush, as if inspired and concentrated by these scenes from the life his mother might have led. “To answer your question … I assume that what you have in mind is penance. I am here to do penance. My diligence – which you’ve been kind enough to remark on – is a form of expiation. But for what? Here I don’t think I understand you. I don’t think I understand you at all. If there’s blood on my hands (isn’t there blood on everyone’s hands?), why assume there’s any connection with my mother? So why should I be wanting – except in the most general way perhaps – to do penance? It’s straightforward: my job on the farm was unsatisfactory, and so, when Sheila Weir suggested the Montgomery, I responded.”

  He had hoped to discount the minister’s theory about penance entirely, but he didn’t think he had done so, and made a gesture of irritation.

  “You’re putting words into my mouth, you know,” the minister objected. “Of course I don’t think you had anything to do with your mother’s death. Blood on your hands? What blood? I wasn’t talking like that. Not at all. What I feel is this: there’s a sense in which we should all be helping the elderly. We all fear death, and so, as our parents approach it, we inwardly – and sometimes outwardly – abandon them, leave them to it. We may deny we’re doing this, but we’re doing it nonetheless. It’s almost a law. In working with the elderly, though, we can try to make up for this betrayal. And, who knows – though I personally doubt if success is ever possible – we may succeed. That’s all I was trying to suggest.”

  “I see,” William said. “It’s possible, I suppose. So that’s why you’re here so often?”

  “My ministry drives me into many dark and challenging corners, William,” the minister replied, deepening his voice and raising his hands. “For instance, there’s an old lady here, a Miss Friel, who hasn’t left her room for years. Almost the last thing she said was that the flesh which falls from her is instantly claimed by me. Now that disturbs me. What a terrible thing to say! I’ve been to see her, but it’s hopeless: she won’t talk. It’s the same when matron tries – and she tries often. Sophie and Margaret, I believe, can get a smile out of her – especially Sophie – but no words. I’d like it if she would talk before she wastes away entirely. It’s not right she should die with her account half made up. You’re a newcomer, William. Mightn’t it get your blood going again to visit her? To try to get her to talk?”

  “What method of interrogation do you propose?” William asked. He had intended to make light of it – he could have sworn the clown in him was trembling to be released – but, once again, he surprised himself. A deeper response; a darker thrust. (It had happened several times this afternoon, and it was perhaps why – the great relief involved was perhaps why – he suddenly felt like banging the arms of his chair.)

  “That’s unnecessarily nasty,” the minister said. “Perverse, in fact. We aren’t torturers of the elderly here. You’ve absolutely no right to think so! Now: will you meet me outside Miss Friel’s door at four?”

  “All right,” William said, standing up. “At four.”

  The minister had stood up also. He was slapping his newspaper against his thigh. Then, abruptly, he held it out.

  “Have a look at this until your charges return. You can give it back to me later. In fact, if you like, if it’s not too much of a strain, you can borrow my paper any day you want.”

  “Thank you, Reverend,” William said.

  Glancing at the headlines, he read: “Famine Area Spreads”.

  When William told Sophie what the minister had asked of him, she said that she couldn’t believe it, that it would be better for the minister if Miss Friel never spoke again. She wouldn’t explain what she meant by this, contenting herself with saying that Miss Friel never ha
d any visitors, had not spoken for over two years, but would sometimes smile, and had once, memorably (at something Sophie had said), laughed. She read, however, and even, Sophie suspected, kept a diary.

  The minister was at Miss Friel’s door before him, talking with matron. William approached slowly. It was his third week at the Montgomery, but he was still uncertain of his status. Sometimes it seemed to be on a par with the nurses’, sometimes distinctly below it. Today, elected by the minister and matron to approach Miss Friel (were all their decisions combined ones?), it was as high, he supposed, as it had ever been. He handed the minister back his newspaper (he had glanced at it merely) and nodded, ready for his adventure into the extraordinary silence that lay behind the door. On the door, in fact, was a notice, erratically printed in blue biro: “Silence, Exam in Progress”. William pointed at it – silently, as it happened – and was told by matron that Miss Friel had three notices: “Silence”, “Silence, Exam in Progress” and “Silence, Court in Session”.

  Matron took William in and introduced him, withdrawing immediately. His last sight of the minister, as matron closed the door on himself and Miss Friel, suggested that he might be in awe of the old lady. And no wonder. Alone with her in the small room, sunlit today and with a hawthorn tree moving outside the window, William was immediately in awe of her himself. Using the flat of her hand, she gestured to him to sit down, and then, still with the flat of her hand, she made a gesture as of one trying to compose and redeem an unsteady situation. In her lap, open, was a book, and from her neck hung a pair of spectacles.

  She was wasted indeed, and sallow, but she bore her emaciation haughtily, as if it was as inconsequential as speech. The main smell in the room was of milk puddings, but on the fringes of it somewhere was another smell, of excessive and troubling sweetness. How did she regard him? Tugging at his white jacket (some stains on it already) as he sat, William thought that he wouldn’t be able to make much headway until he understood her expression. To begin with he had the feeling that it was a familiar one, but he couldn’t understand why he felt this. Then – as though, the more it aspired to be known, the more inscrutable it became – he concluded that he had never seen anything like it before. She was over eighty, but the steadiness of her smile – and it was steady, not unnervingly fixed – made her seem younger. He asked her if she minded if he spoke, but she didn’t reply, and only then did he actually believe in her as the silent Miss Friel. To the other questions he couldn’t help asking in the first moments of their relationship she didn’t reply either, but slight changes in her smile, and in the tilt of her head, told him that she was listening. He wished that Sophie had warned him that she smiled so much, and that her smile didn’t seem to mean happiness, or hope, or welcome particularly. If he felt anything about it at all, it was that it expressed certainty – a certainty that the world would continue to mean what Miss Friel in her dying days had decided it should mean. The meaning of her expression; of his presence here; of the minister’s desire that Miss Friel should speak again before death; of the movements of the hawthorn tree outside the window; of the world in which all this was happening: it was the clamour of these questions, as well as the conviction that Miss Friel was a good listener, that made William start speaking. He spoke to lessen their awful weight, and he spoke in a voice – at once trembling and strong – he hardly recognised. He also saw, lying at the foot of Miss Friel’s bed, the notice “Silence”, and experienced it as the most wonderful compound invitation or sanction. “Silence, Welcome, Let Go.”