Is There Anything You Want? (34 page)

It had been a farce. First, a shadow had been seen that looked like ‘something'; then the bone scan showed ‘hot spots' in her hip bone that could be ‘something'; then the somethings were declared nothings, or, to be accurate, arthritis. So they said. Arthritis. She was young, but arthritis, she was told, was no respecter of age. Did arthritis run in her family? Yes, it did. Well then. She had an arthritic hip. It responded to a course of antiinflammatories. The pain faded, only to reappear if she walked up very steep hills which she hardly ever did. But the agony she had gone through did not. She felt that if she had awaited events, the pain would have settled down anyway. She'd tried, ever since, to control her fears that every pain was cancer. But it was wearing, this constantly watching herself, being on guard, permanently worrying that she would be caught out and that on the one occasion she didn't report a pain, that would be the fatal one.

Control. That was what was important. Lean on no one, be sensible, await events. Oh, but it was a harsh instruction to have to give oneself. No wonder, she thought, that she'd wanted to learn to fly.

MRS HIBBERT, DRIVING
to St Mary's, almost stalled her car on the steep hill going out of town. There, flying down on the other side, was that girl Emma – she was sure it was her – and behind her, on another bike, that boy ‘Sluke, both of them shrieking and laughing, not a care in the world. What annoyed her, and momentarily distracted her from concentrating on her driving, was the unworthiness of her thoughts. She knew she ought to be glad to see Emma back safe and sound, and obviously in excellent spirits and health, but instead she felt resentful, as though she had been made a fool of. Had the girl come to say she was sorry for her abrupt departure? No, she had not, and very probably was never going to. Emma didn't care about her. Better to put Emma out of her mind.

She arrived at St Mary's, feeling that she had a great deal to do. There was, first of all, her appointment with the Rev. Maddox. It had been agreed, at the last committee meeting of the Friends, that it would be an act of kindness to take him on a tour of the hospital to give him some idea of what their work was about. She felt quite comfortable with the idea of being in charge of the Rev. Maddox but rather suspected, from the encounter they had already had, that he might not be so comfortable with her. She'd asked him which college he'd been a member of at Oxford and when he'd told her St John's, she had said her late husband had gone there too. This had not seemed to create between them the bond she had anticipated. He was a shy, nervous man, the Rev. Maddox,
she could see that, without any small talk. This was rather admirable – she had no time for small talk herself and heaven knows she had suffered enough from it in the company of Dot and others – but on the other hand it made all conversation, or at least the starting of it, a strain. She was going to have to choose her topics carefully and let him know that she was not an idle chatterer.

Then she had to find out what had happened to Chrissie. She'd heard the alarming news weeks ago that Dr Harrison had left and was rumoured to have given up being a doctor. Rita, to whom she'd again given a lift, had told her. It was the talk of the clinic – everyone was shocked. Mrs Hibbert had at once telephoned Chrissie, and when there was never any reply, after repeated attempts, she'd written her a letter, which in turn had received no answer. But Chrissie was back in St Mary's, according to Rita (giving her a lift had become a regular event), and Mrs Hibbert was determined to find her and discover what had been going on. She also wanted to express her relief that Chrissie had come back and had not shirked her duty.

The Rev. Maddox was waiting. He stood near the door of the Friends' room looking embarrassed, his hands clasped in front of him, rather high on his chest, and a frown on his face. This frown only lifted marginally when she strode up to him and said his name, and he was slow to hold out his hand to be shaken. She suggested that first they have a cup of tea in the Friends' room, which was fortunately empty, and he agreed that that would be appreciated. Together they went into the room, and after she had put the kettle on, Mrs Hibbert closed the door firmly. ‘Do sit down,' she urged. The Rev. Maddox perched on the edge of a chair, hands on knees, and cleared his throat. Mrs Hibbert looked inquiringly towards him, thinking the throat-clearing heralded some utterance, but none was forthcoming. ‘So,' she said, giving him his tea, ‘I believe your last parish was in Manchester?' ‘Indeed,' he said. ‘And did you like Manchester?' ‘I found it difficult,' the Rev. Maddox said, not looking at her, ‘but it was not because of the place or the people. It was for personal reasons. I liked Manchester very much, but I was unwell while there. Shall we begin our tour?'

All the time she took him round the hospital, explaining what the Friends did, she was thinking about that word ‘unwell'. He'd been ‘unwell', not ill. She thought she knew what that meant. Francis had used it when he'd been struggling to tell her what he'd felt for years, ‘unwell in the head', he'd called it. He'd been to church that day, to evensong, but she'd had a cold and had not accompanied him. It always surprised her how devout Francis was, and how much he enjoyed going to church, whereas her faith wavered and actually going to church never seemed important to her. The church Francis belonged to seemed to her very high-church and she had preferred the simplicity of St James's, the church she had gone to as a child. He'd come home in a strange mood, talking about the sermon he'd heard. He'd tried to précis it for her but she wasn't really interested and her attention wandered. And then suddenly she'd heard him say, ‘I must be honest with you, Mary. I haven't been honest, and I should have been, the vicar made me see I should be.' For a moment, she had felt a tremor of real alarm at the thought of some awful thing he might be going to tell her, but once he began talking this had been replaced by bewilderment. Whatever was he saying? What did this peculiar ‘unwell in the head' business mean? Francis, normally so fluent and articulate, had stumbled over words and faltered.

It appeared to be, so far as she could make out, something to do with feeling he was not in the right body. He'd wondered if this feeling meant that he wished he was a woman, but he'd come to the conclusion that this was not the problem at all. Nor did he think he was a homosexual, afraid to admit it – it wasn't that, he wouldn't have been afraid. All his life he'd felt his mind and body were not properly fused. His body didn't seem to obey the commands of his mind. Nobody suspected how peculiar he was. He had never, he told her, had any fully realised sexual experience, and it was her acceptance of his condition (though she hadn't known what it was) that had made him love her. She'd made no demands for him to have to satisfy.

She'd wept, how she'd wept. How could a wife not cry her heart out, hearing this? But what she'd wept for was her own failure to realise there had been something wrong all the time
with Francis. How could they have been such friends, so very close to each other, so happy in each other's company, and yet she had not known that most important thing about him? It had been stupid of her, and insensitive, not to have deduced that her husband must be in some way abnormal to have no desire whatsoever for sexual relations. She supposed that somewhere in her mind she had had suspicions that he might secretly prefer men to women, but that she had accepted this and simply did not mind – it was part of the unspoken bargain between them. To find that she had been quite wrong, and that Francis had been tormented by his ‘unwellness', this lack of desire, seemed a reflection on her own lack of understanding. He hadn't been able to speak to her, that was the very worst aspect of his suffering.

After his confession, things were never quite the same – an awkwardness lay between Francis and herself which worried them both. Silently, she cursed the vicar's sermon, with its exhortation to be completely honest. Honesty, in this case, had decidedly
not
been the best policy. She wondered whether she ought to encourage Francis to seek treatment of some sort, but when she tentatively made a reference to this possibility he shuddered and said he had tried psychotherapy years ago and it had not helped. She went on feeling she should do something about Francis and his ‘unwellness', but embarrassment prevented her from consulting anyone. Meanwhile, he grew quieter and quieter. He said he simply felt tired, but since tiredness was such an easy thing to talk about she managed to persuade him to go to his GP (who was not her own doctor). He went, and came back a little more like his usual cheerful self, which made her wonder if his doctor had got more out of him. At any rate, some medication had been prescribed. She didn't find out till later that the tablets he took were anti-depressants.

When she found Francis still heavily asleep at lunchtime that Sunday she hadn't felt any particular sense of alarm. He sometimes did sleep late if he'd been working on papers into the early hours, as he had been doing. It had annoyed her, that this was necessary on a Saturday evening, especially since she'd cooked an especially delicious dinner and they'd shared a bottle of Chianti – it seemed an insult to the meal for Francis to go off
into his room claiming important work that had to be done for Monday. She'd shouted, in the morning, that coffee was ready, but he hadn't appeared. But by noon she was seriously irritated at his behaviour and uncertain whether to prepare lunch or not. So she'd gone into his room, saying, ‘Francis, it
is
nearly lunchtime,' and it was not his lack of reply which had alerted her to there being something very wrong but his breathing.

She'd noticed at once the empty container beside his bed. When the paramedics arrived, she handed the Nardil packet to them. They said there should be a warning card somewhere, because Nardil had a high overdose rating, but she had never seen one. From the beginning, travelling in the ambulance, she had been adamant: Francis would
never
have taken an overdose. He had been tired, he'd been working very late, he must simply have misjudged the dosage. She remembered, when questioned at the hospital, that he had complained the evening before that his vision was blurred, which was why it was taking him the weekend to read through the documents he had. They asked what he had eaten and drunk the day before, and she listed (with some pride) the fillet steak, the potatoes, the broad beans, the salad, the Stilton and the wine. It was not until the inquest that she heard how Nardil reacted with all these things, and the inference was that Francis must have known they would. But nevertheless, the verdict had been one of accidental death, to her enormous relief. It was a verdict she believed to be absolutely correct – she would not allow that Francis had been either intending to kill himself or making a cry for help. Nonsense. She had been there to help, he had not been without it. Only a small, inner voice asked if it had been the kind of help he had wanted, and she silenced it.

*

The Rev. Maddox made little comment during their perambulation of the hospital, and she gave up trying to interest him in anything. By the time they parted, she had decided his ‘unwellness' had not been the same as her husband's. She didn't know what had been wrong with him (maybe was still wrong), though
she suspected that, in his case, the problem was his homosexuality, his inability to ‘come out', but she was quite certain he would not be a good chaplain. He would never know what patients wanted, never know how to talk to them, let alone comfort them. He was quite clearly one of those unfortunate individuals unable properly to communicate with anyone. She was sure he would have few, if any, friends, and his illness was probably due to this inability to establish human contact. ‘No man is an island' Mrs Hibbert said to herself, but the Rev. Maddox was trying to be one. She could have told him it wouldn't work. If he was really so repelled by his fellow human beings then he should go into a monastery or else have treatment. There. She would wipe him from her mind.

But her mind was still full of him as she hurried down the corridors to find Chrissie. She didn't like it when she had to admit she had failed with someone, had failed entirely to break through their reserve or, in some cases, their distrust of her. She wanted to be seen as decent and fair and eager to help, a safe pair of hands. It hurt when she sensed people were suspicious of her and that clergyman had been very suspicious indeed
without cause.
When she got to the clinic, she was still troubled, and struggled to concentrate on what she wanted to say to Chrissie when she found her. Finding her proved difficult. The clinic was in semi-darkness, not a light on and no one about. She looked at her watch: 1.25 p.m. Of course, it was much too early, Rita had told her she never arrived before 1.45 even if the occasional patient did. Mrs Hibbert was not going to sit on one of those uncomfortable seats and wait. Instead, she retraced her steps along the thin yellow line, walking very slowly, as though she were patrolling. She turned a corner and hesitated. She had no means of knowing from which direction Chrissie would come. Sporting her Friend of St Mary's armband, as she did, she could wander into most departments of the hospital at will, but she did not know where Chrissie would be. It was not sensible to leave the clinic, and so she was obliged to return and stand like a sentinel at the door. When, after a few uneasy minutes, she saw Rita approaching, she felt embarrassed.

‘Why, Mrs Hibbert,' Rita said, ‘what brings . . .'

But Mrs Hibbert interrupted her. ‘I'm looking for Dr Harrison,' she said. ‘Will she be along soon?'

‘She won't be along at all,' Rita said, putting lights on and opening up her cubicle. ‘She's transferring.'

‘Hospitals?' asked Mrs Hibbert, reluctant to follow Rita into the clinic. ‘Hospitals?' she repeated, shouting slightly. She could see Rita shake her head. ‘Jobs,' she said. ‘Doing training, some research thing.'