The Good Doctor (12 page)

‘Oh, hello,’ she said, ‘yes, Frank, yes.’

The American accent, in this room of flat vowels, was startling. And it was a shock to realize, after all the occasions when she’d been mentioned, that she wasn’t African. I didn’t know what to
say and after an awkward moment I moved away. I’d seen Dr Ngema when I came in, perched unhappily on the edge of my bed, sipping from her glass and sneaking glances at her watch, and I went to sit
next to her now; she turned to me with relief.

The first thing she said was, ‘Frank, I’ve got to go in a moment.’

‘Oh. All right.’

‘I’ve got lots of work to do. But it’s a lovely party, lovely.’

She said it with such insincere emphasis that I realized she thought I’d organized it.

‘This is Laurence’s party,’ I said. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

‘Yes, yes. We should have little get-togethers more often. It’s good for... for morale. Which reminds me, Frank. I wanted to ask you. In connection with your idea.’

‘What idea?’

‘Well, you know. The project. The outreach thing.’ She dropped her voice in a secretive way. ‘Laurence has talked to me. But I want to know: how did you know where to go?’

‘What? I’m not with you, Ruth.’

‘I mean, why that particular community? I didn’t know you were interested in community work, Frank. You kept that very quiet.’

I stared at her, my head whirring. But the beginning of comprehension had started. I said, ‘Did he tell you...’

‘Shh. Shh.’ She hissed it urgently at me. I broke off as Laurence came up to ask if we wanted more wine. ‘No, thanks,’ she said to him, ‘I have to go in a moment.’

‘So soon?’

‘Work, work.’ When he’d gone she turned quickly back to me. ‘This isn’t the moment to talk about it, Frank. But come and speak to me, all right? I’ve got some views on it.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’m not sure about the idea, Frank, to be honest. I don’t think it’ll work... I like change and innovation, you know that. But it’s how you change. Or in this case, when. That’s what matters.
But here he comes, so shh. But talk to me soon, all right?’ She drained her glass and set it down on the floor. ‘Now I’d better go. Work, work. The office is calling me. But it’s been a lovely
party, Frank. Thank you so much.’

‘It isn’t my party,’ I said again, but she was already on her way to the door.

Laurence hurried up with a glass of wine for me; he sat down on the bed. ‘Did she have a good time? Dr Ngema? She didn’t stay long.’

‘Laurence, she said something I don’t understand.’

‘What?’ He looked around at the awkward cheeriness in the room, which felt, like the tape, slightly stretched. ‘Is this music all right, do you think?’

‘It’s fine.’

‘Are you sure? And the party? Is everyone having a good time? Is it okay?’

‘It’s okay, Laurence.’ But when I looked around, the peculiarity of the scene struck me again: Zanele talking to Jorge in the corner, Tehogo on the bed opposite me, an arm draped around the
shoulder of his friend, and, in a space near the bathroom door, Themba and Julius dancing together. I almost didn’t know where I was.

‘Really? I wanted to do something to make Zanele feel, you know, welcome.’

‘She looks happy.’

‘Does she? But she always looks like that. She’s a happy person.’

She did look a little more relaxed, nodding as she listened to Jorge. It was from Laurence, staring across at her with his wide, alarmed eyes, that the unhappiness seemed to come.

‘You didn’t tell me she’s American.’

‘Didn’t I? Where did you think she came from?’

‘The Sudan, obviously.’

‘Sudan?’ he said, amazed. ‘No, no, she’s from the States. I wanted to ask you,’ he went on, in an offhand way, ‘if you could do me a little favour.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Do you think you could hang out with her for a couple of hours tomorrow night? I’m on duty, I don’t want her to be alone.’

‘Um, yes, sure, I could do that. But if you speak to Dr Ngema, she could change your shift.’

‘No, no, it’s okay.’

‘But she’s come up here to see you. Don’t you want to —’

‘No, no, my shift is a commitment. I don’t want to change it.’

In the past few weeks Dr Ngema had taken to giving Laurence shifts of duty on his own. He was absurdly proud of this change in status. But in truth he was only manning the office as a front; if
any serious case came in, he had to call one of us. Nothing would be easier than for him to change his shift.

‘She doesn’t want me to change it, anyway,’ he said.

‘Who doesn’t?’

‘Zanele. Work comes first for both of us. And I’ll see her on Sunday. Thanks for this, Frank. I appreciate it.’

Maybe Laurence’s desperation had infected me, but I found myself getting very drunk very quickly. I downed glass after glass of wine, till at some point in the evening the merriment around me
felt suddenly genuine. And I was part of it.

The configuration of bodies in the room had changed now. Themba and Julius were sitting on my bed. Claudia had somehow appeared while Jorge had gone, and she was locked in earnest conversation
with Zanele and Laurence on the floor. I was sitting on the other bed, between Tehogo and his friend.

Tehogo’s friend was called Raymond and his name felt comfortably familiar to me, so I must have been sitting there for a while. I’d seen him around often before, but we’d never exchanged more
than a few terse words. He was young and almost girlishly pretty, with a smooth plastic skin and a charming smile. He had the same slick sense of style as Tehogo, so that with their short hair and
gold jewellery and trendy city clothes neither of them seemed to belong here. The friendliness between the three of us also felt misplaced, unreal. Tehogo and I had hardly done more than grunt at
each other, but there was a free flow of conversation tonight, which seemed to have risen up from nowhere. And we were sitting close to each other, so close that our shared body warmth was too hot,
and Raymond had one elbow resting on my shoulder. Both of them were wearing their dark glasses, even in the under-lit room, giving a curious impression of blindness.

We were talking about me sharing a room with Laurence. How we had got on to this topic I have no idea, but I found myself announcing suddenly that I had wanted Tehogo’s room.

His smile froze as he understood. Immediately I had to explain and justify: ‘But no problem now. I don’t want it any more.’

‘You want my room?’

‘No, no. I’m happy now. I talked to Dr Ngema about it once, but no problem any more. Really.’

Raymond said something to him and they both burst out laughing. Then Raymond said to me, ‘You want his room, you wait.’

‘No, no, I’m telling you, I don’t want it.’

‘One month, two month,’ Raymond said. ‘You wait.’

‘You don’t understand,’ I started saying, then I thought about it. ‘What’s happening in two months?’

‘He’s getting a new job,’ Raymond said.

‘Is he?’

‘New job,’ Tehogo said. ‘Good job.’

‘What job?’ I said. ‘You can tell me. I’ll keep it a secret.’

‘Good work, bad work,’ Raymond said. ‘It’s a good-bad job.’

Tehogo patted me reassuringly on the back. ‘Don’t worry. You stay here. You take my room. Then I come and cut off your head.’

They both laughed uproariously again. Then they spoke together across me and a more sober mood descended.

‘This is joking talk,’ Raymond said.

‘No job,’ Tehogo assured me. ‘Everything is joking talk.’

Before I could speak again Laurence ducked anxiously into view. ‘I’m worried about this music, Frank. Is the music okay?’

‘Don’t worry about the music’

But Tehogo overruled me. ‘The music is no good,’ he announced sternly. ‘I have better music. Wait. Two minutes. I’m coming now.’ He went out to get it. While he was gone Raymond kept leaning on
me, talking into my ear. He was saying something about Laurence’s girlfriend that I couldn’t quite hear, but the tone was genial and insinuating; it sounded as if it might be funny, if I could
catch it.

Then Tehogo was back with a handful of loose cassettes that he spilled over the floor. And the beat changed, becoming faster, more mindless and energetic, and somehow everybody was dancing.
Everyone except Laurence. He sat on my bed and watched us with a puzzled, mournful expression. I called to him to join us, but he shook his head.

I was amazed at myself. I hadn’t danced, I think, since my wedding. But now I found myself weaving and bouncing opposite the most unlikely of partners, Tehogo. And I didn’t recognize in him the
locked, earthbound body he slouched around in all day; he could really move. He was sinuous and supple, but strangest of all, he was happy. His grinning, sweating face seemed mad to me, till I
recognized in it a mirror image of my own.

Something had happened to us that night; it was as if we’d fallen through a wall that normally bricked us in too tightly to move. The room opened and closed like a lurid flower around me. I
wasn’t myself. The loose abandon that had come over me was something foreign and lush. I felt as if I was up on a height, from which I could look down on the usual contours of my life and see how
narrow and constricted they were. But I would never go back. I knew that all of us would stay where we were, in this high place, in this benevolent state of friendship that had fallen like grace
upon us.

And then everyone was leaving. The music was played out, the wine was finished, and Tehogo and Raymond wanted me to go with them to Mama Mthembu’s for more dancing and drinking. But I knew that
I was done for the night. My head was already tender. I stood at the door, saying goodbye to everybody, as if I was the host and they were all my invited guests.

‘See you in the morning,’ I said to Tehogo. I enfolded him in an embrace, feeling his thin shoulder-blades moving under my hands.

‘Remember,’ Raymond said. ‘In two months you can have your own room.’

‘He is joking,’ Tehogo said. ‘It is not true.’

‘I don’t know what’s true any more,’ I said.

More laughter, rootless and excessive. Then the place was emptied out. In the weak light of the lamp I recognized my room again, full of rubbish and rubble. From the speakers came an endless
soft crackle of static.

‘I’m just taking Zanele home,’ Laurence said. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

She was smiling self-consciously, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear. She didn’t look at me.

‘Come back in the morning.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t leave you with all this to clear up. That’s not fair.’

‘We can do it tomorrow.’

‘No, no. I’ll be back in a minute.’

When they were gone I contemplated the debris and skewed furniture while the buoyancy in me started to flatten out. I couldn’t believe that I’d danced and drunk like somebody half my age, but
the youthfulness felt good, and from its gassy glow it was Laurence Waters who looked old and tired and jaded. Why wasn’t he spending the night with her?

He was back in fifteen minutes or so. Though he’d said he was coming back to clean up, he only looked at the disorder of the room and sank on to his bed. ‘Was that all right?’ he said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘The party. Was it okay? Did people enjoy it?’

‘I think so.’

‘Really? How did it compare with other parties?’

‘Laurence, in all the years I’ve been here, nobody’s ever had a party. Yours was the first.’

‘Really?’ he said again. A dim smile broke through the anxiety. ‘You were fantastic, Frank.’

‘That’s because I’m drunk.’

‘Are you?’

‘I’m so drunk, Laurence. Jesus Christ. It’s been years since I felt like this.’

‘Oh, good, good,’ he said vaguely. His face clouded again. ‘But why did Dr Ngema leave early?’

‘I don’t think parties are her thing.’

He nodded distractedly and made a show of collecting some paper cups together. I watched him for a while, then I said: ‘What’s this outreach project she was talking about?’

‘Oh, that.’

‘Well, what is it?’

‘You should know, Frank. You’re the first person I told about it.’

‘Your travelling clinic.’

He nodded. ‘But I must thank you. It was your idea that I try Maria’s village first. It was a great suggestion.’

‘You’ve been to Maria’s village?’

‘A few times. It’s ideal. So the plan is to hold a trial clinic there in a week or so. See how it goes. And if it’s successful...’ He laughed. ‘No more symbols, Frank. You were right.’

‘Why has nobody said a word about it?’

‘Dr Ngema’s going to tell everybody at the staff meeting on Monday. Let’s not talk about it now, Frank. I’m not in the mood.’

So we let the subject drop and soon afterwards we fell asleep. It bothered me that this project had taken shape at Maria’s village without anybody telling me, but it was part of the weird
harmony of the evening that it also didn’t matter. The past was complex and fractured, but it was past. Tomorrow was another day.

I woke in the morning with a terrible headache suspended between my temples. We had left the lamp on and its wan glow mixed with daylight to reveal the mess in the room. Crisps
trodden into the floor, broken plastic cups holding the dregs of wine.

When I got up I saw that somebody had knocked the wooden fish that Laurence had given me off the table; it lay broken on the floor. I threw the pieces into the bin and peered through my pain at
Laurence sprawled face-down, his mouth open, a string of saliva on his lip. The day already had a used and ugly look to me.

A hot shower and an aspirin didn’t help. Laurence was still asleep when I went out. I wasn’t sure yet where I was going, but I just wanted to get away.

As I emerged into the corridor, Tehogo was locking his door. He seemed in as much pain as me. I knew I ought to smile at him, but the smile just wasn’t in me this morning.

He said to me, ‘My tapes.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve got my tapes. In your room.’

It took a moment for my blurred brain to understand. Then his rudeness irritated me. ‘Laurence is still sleeping,’ I said shortly. ‘You can get them later.’

He grunted and in an instant it was there with us again: all the dourness and sourness and mistrust. The past, recharged and renewed. Nothing was different after all.