Nor All Your Tears (17 page)

‘You all right?' he asked, his face assuming a frown.

I considered giving him a brief résumé of my recent past, decided that there was no point. ‘Just tired.'

He grunted and there was a moment where I sort of stood aside and he sort of came in without being overtly asked, which is the way that close friends and relatives do things. ‘Been on call?' he asked as we arrived in the kitchen.

‘Yep.'

‘Shall I make the tea?'

‘Yes, please,' I sighed, sitting down heavily at the table. There was no point in saying anything more.

As he stirred the pot, he said conversationally, ‘I think things are going to be all right with Michael.'

‘Do you?'

‘Ada and he have had a heart-to-heart. She tells me there isn't a problem. It was all just a bit of a shock for him. Give him a couple of days, she says.'

I nodded understandingly. ‘The news must have been like a blow in the midriff.'

He was putting my mug down in front of me as I said this; it had a picture of Einstein on it. ‘What?' he asked, and I couldn't really blame him. Thankfully, he didn't want an answer; I had long ago noticed that my father often asked me questions without wanting a reply. We sat at the table for a few silent moments of familial companionship, after which he suddenly ventured, ‘I never had a problem with relativity.'

‘No?'

He shook his head gravely. ‘It was quantum mechanics that gave me trouble.'

‘Really?'

He had both hands around his mug, which bore a line print of Newton. ‘There's logic about relativity, so you can accept the consequences, no matter how odd. You can see that, can't you?'

‘If you say so.'

‘There's no logic about quantum mechanics, though. It's just odd.'

‘Like life, then.'

He brightened, as if I had said something witty. ‘Yes!' he exclaimed. ‘I suppose it is.' Then, his face suddenly perplexed, ‘Is your jaw all right?'

I don't know what it looked like, but it felt huge and it throbbed. ‘I've got toothache.'

‘Oh.'

More silence. I wanted to ask him why he was there – because there was obviously another reason for his visit, although its nature was as yet unknown to me – but I knew that I couldn't, that if I did, all the uncertainties would collapse around us (an ironically quantum mechanical situation). We both imbibed more tea; Dad always made a good mug of tea. Eventually he took in a lot of air and said, ‘I know you think I'm a stupid old fool.'

‘No, I don't . . .'

‘Yes, you do, and yes, I am.'

‘No . . .'

‘Lance, please. I am not completely demented. Not yet, anyway.'

I smiled, although I was suddenly, unaccountably sad. ‘I know that, Dad.'

He nodded seriously. Opened his mouth, was about to speak, didn't, breathed in, breathed out, shut his mouth, then drank the last of his tea. Only at this point did he speak. ‘They're not the most attractive family, are they?' I had a thousand things to say and could say none of them for a moment. He laughed but it was a melancholic thing, one that might come from someone who has just seen the back half of a maggot poking out of the apple he has just bitten into. ‘I've been trying to tell myself that I'm being judgemental, but it's tough. It's odd, because they all seem completely different from Ada.'

Being a family doctor means having to react instinctively and caringly whatever you are shown or whatever is said to you, no matter who is in front of you; you must never leave a pause, never allow the patient to begin to feel embarrassed and, above all, never suggest to them that you have opinions about what they say or what they show you. Being a professional means presenting yourself as a perfect replica of a human being, one who appears caring and knowing everything, yet at the same time one completely without emotion. You can get a long way as a doctor if you perfect that art.

I like to think I'm pretty good at my job.

I knew at once what he was talking about, and knew at once what to say.

‘Dad, you're marrying Ada, not her family.'

‘They come as a package. She's very close to them. She lives with them in the loft of their house; Michael converted it for her.'

From what I'd seen she was very close to her son and grandchildren, but I reckoned you could drive a supertanker through the space between Ada and her daughter-in-law. Not that that mattered; at that particular moment, I was more inclined to the distaff side of the Clarke family, given the fact that my mandible was groaning with silent, throbbing agony. ‘I'm sure things will grow easier as they get to know you, and you get to know them.'

He looked less than convinced. ‘I hope so.'

‘And you and she will be living together in your own house.'

‘Obviously.'

‘You can choose your wife, but you can't choose her relatives,' I pointed out.

‘Mmm,' he said thoughtfully and, to my ears, there was a distinct lack of chuffedness about him as he did so. ‘You're not bothered, are you, Lance?'

‘What about?' I asked, although I knew exactly what he meant.

‘About me and Ada.' I tried to respond but it still wasn't my turn and he went on, ‘I know we're close, but . . .'

He had run out of steam, which was maybe just as well. I rushed into the vacuum. Before either of us knew quite what was going on, I had moved towards him and we were hugging in a decidedly un-English way. ‘Dad, there's no problem. Really.'

It had been a while since we had had more than five per cent of our body surfaces in contact, so he was a bit taken aback. There was a feeling of release and I felt the brush of his beard on my shoulder; I tried not to shudder or look at my epaulette. ‘Yes, well . . .' he muttered, breathing quite deeply, as if I had just showed him a picture of me in women's underwear and nothing else. We stared at each other for what seemed like an hour, was almost certainly only a couple of seconds. Then normal Dad was back and he remarked in the tone I have heard him use an uncountable number of times before, ‘It's just that I can't say that Michael and Tricia would have been my first choice from the catalogue.'

I cast around for positives, which took a while. ‘David's a fine lad,' I said after what I hope wasn't too long a pause. ‘You and he get on really well.'

This produced a nod and a smile. ‘Yes, we do, don't we?' A pause. ‘He hasn't been at school for the past couple of days.'

‘Is he ill?' I asked out of politeness rather than professional or emotional concern.

‘Ada says he's a bit below par.' Which is one the commonest diseases known to mankind; it is also completely impervious to medication or any sort.

‘Probably a virus,' I suggested.

He nodded. ‘Probably.'

I put out my hand to rest it on his and suddenly I found that I couldn't recall the last time I'd touched him so often. He didn't react, which was just the right thing to do, but it wasn't long before he asked, ‘More tea?' and stood up.

He was English, after all.

‘Why not?'

He looked at me more closely. ‘That's one hell of a toothache, Lance,' he observed. ‘The side of your jaw looks as though it's been clobbered.'

Clobbered.
I thought,
What a wonderful word.
It was the type of word only my father would use. I said without answering, ‘There are some paracetamol in the cupboard above the kettle. Would you get them for me?'

TWENTY-FOUR

T
hat night Max and I went to see
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
at the Fairfield Halls, which is the ventricle of Croydon's cultural heart; the atrium is the Ashcroft Theatre in which, I am ashamed to admit, I have never set either of my feet. The date was the price that Max was paying for making me go to see
Tommy
earlier in the year; I am not a fan of pop music, and have a positive dislike of Ken Russell's work (I will not say ‘of Ken Russell', since I have never met the man); in truth, the music wasn't too bad, but it was set in his usual lurid, polychromatic and psychedelic style, one that distracted rather than attracted.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
was altogether different; it was an intelligent, thought-provoking film, well-acted and one that asked as many questions as it answered. In short, apart from the intolerable temperature we had to endure in that foetid darkness, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. We had a drink in the bar afterwards, as much to rehydrate as anything.

The Fairfield Hall complex is a fine example of post-war architecture, in that it is a concrete chancre on the landscape. Many years' experience of it has, however, turned an ugly thing into an icon of beauty, the beast into a beauty, at least in my eye. It has the advantage of space, for before it are flat concrete vistas in which there are fountains – these water features are an attempt to provide something fun and joyful, but this fails because after twenty years they have become slightly
grubby
. The traffic rumbles past interminably, waxing and waning with the hours but, as year follows year, on an imperceptible and inevitable crescendo. The Brighton to London railway line is not far away and this brings its own intermittent additions to the sonic background that is an indivisible part of Croydon. There are graffiti but, somehow, these seem normal and perfectly in keeping with this bleak, Orwellian location.

The interior, though, is slightly less harsh on the retinas; it is done out with a lot of varnished wood, although the lighting is a little postmodern and very subdued. There are interesting paintings on the walls, none of which seems anything more than a vivid, slightly coarse, multichromatic regurgitation of paint; try as I can, I have never seen a recognizable object in any of them. The beer is pretty dire too, but any port (or beer) in a storm . . .

‘What did you think?' I enquired eagerly.

She frowned. ‘Honestly?' she asked diffidently.

‘Of course,' was my confident reply. I was enthused by my recent cinematic experience.

She hesitated to assemble her thoughts, then took a detour. ‘Do you mind if I'm honest?'

Now there, in case you've missed it, is the red flag; me, I'm colour-blind. ‘Of course not.'

More of the same hesitation, this time with a side order of a sip of her drink, before, ‘I thought it was all very silly.'

I was stunned. Actually, that is an underestimate on the scale of, ‘I see no ships'; actually, I was nearly concussed with shock. I managed four syllables – ‘You are joking' – but the effort cost me dear; I had to finish my pint of amber dishwater (that they called ‘ale') for sustenance.

‘Mental hospitals aren't really like that,' she pronounced confidently.

Springfield Hospital loomed into the rear of my consciousness; asylums in Oregon certainly appeared to be a lot whiter and cleaner than those in Tooting, but McMurphy hadn't been a patient of the NHS, and I had seen a lot of higher truth in that film. ‘Not in Britain,' I extemporized, hoping for a slightly firmer argument to pop up.

‘And nurses aren't really that beastly, are they?'

I had a fairly solid foundation on which to contest that one; as a medical student, I had quickly learned that experienced nursing staff treated me and my kind as amusing but ultimately irritating simpletons, to be either abused or laughed at. I could see that Nurse Ratched wasn't too far from reality. ‘I don't know . . .'

‘And that Red Indian man wrenching the water fountain out of the ground and throwing it like that . . .'

‘I'm not sure that that was . . .'

‘It was all a bit unbelievable, really,' she concluded. With this, she drained her Cinzano and put the emptied glass on the water-ringed table between us. ‘Can I have another one?'

My journey to the bar, although short, was a dazed one. Having sat through nearly two hours of appalling acting, strangled singing and disconnected narrative in the name of love when she had dragged me along to see
Tommy
, I thought her criticisms to be at best misjudged, at worst close to hypocritical. She had completely missed the point. How could someone as intelligent as Max not appreciate the subtleties of the film? More importantly, how could she not see how vacuous
Tommy
had been?

Please believe me, I am not pompous. I like mindless entertainment as much as the next sad bugger – I found
Star Trek
quite fascinating, if increasingly ludicrous as the episodes went by – but I have my limits; in any case, the important thing is to appreciate the finer things in life whilst still enjoying those that are slightly coarser. Also I must insist that I like modern music. Max introduced me to Barclay James Harvest at the end of last year and I have not once failed to look back.

I made my way back to the table, still slightly shocked not just at her artistic insensibilities but also at the price of the drinks. I was about to wax lyrical about this but Max cut me vocally short. ‘Who's that man?' she asked.

For a moment I didn't comprehend what she was talking about, and looked around the various couples and groups that were dotted around the room. I looked back at Max, my face questioning, and she nodded at the bar, towards the far-left end close to the windows that gave a panoramic view of Croydon's ceaseless activity. There was a long angled mirror at the back of the bar, reflecting everything – the drinks, the glasses, the upper halves of the bar staff, the bar, those sitting at the bar and much of the room.

And Tristan.

He was sitting at the bar, lazily drinking lager of some sort, his eyes looking up at the mirror and directly at us; he didn't have the dazed expression I had seen on his face at Springfield.

‘Oh, shit,' I breathed. She looked at me oddly and I had to collect myself before I could smile reassurance that was, I have to admit, not mine to give. ‘It's one of my old patients,' I said as calmly as I could. ‘Hang on.'