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Authors: Alan Bennett

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‘I hope this isn’t one of those private beds,’ said Midgley. ‘I’m opposed to that on principle.’

‘You’ve never asked me if I was married,’ she said.

‘You’re a nurse. That puts you in a different category.’ There was a pause. ‘Are you married?’

‘He’s on an oil rig.’

‘I hope so,’ said Midgley.

Later on he had a cigarette and she had a cake.

‘I was certain they were going to ring from the ward,’ he said.

‘No.’ She lifted up the cushion and put the receiver back.

He frowned. Then grinned. ‘No harm done,’ he said.

They were just settling in again when the phone rang. She answered.

‘Yes,’ she said, looking at him. ‘Yes.’

‘What’s the matter?’ said Midgley.

She put the phone down and looked away.

He was already out of bed and pulling his trousers on.

‘Had she rung before?’

She had turned to face the wall.

‘Had she?’ Midgley was shouting. ‘Was she ringing?’

‘Don’t shout. There are night nurses asleep.’

At the end of the long corridor the doors burst open.

‘It’s the biggest wonder I’d not gone into see Mrs Tunnicliffe,’ said Aunty Kitty. ‘She’s in Ward 7 with her hip. She’s been waiting two years. But I don’t know what it was. Something made me come back upstairs. I was sat looking at a
Woman’s Own
then in walks Joyce and next minute the nurse is calling us in and he has his eyes open! So we were both there, weren’t we.’

Mrs Midgley nodded. They were all three stood by the bedside.

‘He just said, “Is our Denis here? Is our Denis here?”’ said Aunty Kitty, ‘and I said: “He’s just coming, Frank.” And he smiled a little smile and it was all over. Bless him. I was his only sister.’

The body lay flat on the bed, the eyes closed, the sheet up to the neck.

‘The dot does something different when you’re dying,’ said Aunty Kitty, looking at the screen which now showed a continuous line. ‘I wasn’t watching it, naturally, but I noticed out of the corner of my eye it was doing something different during the last moments.’

‘I think he’s smiling,’ said Mrs Midgley.

‘Of course he’s smiling,’ said Midgley. He went and looked out of the window. ‘He’s won. Scored. In the last minute of extra time.’

Mrs Midgley came over to the window and said in an undertone: ‘You disgust me.’

A nurse came in and switched off the monitor.

They went out.

‘It’s a pity you weren’t here, Denis,’ said Aunty Kitty. ‘I mean when it came to the crunch. You’ve been so good. You’ve been here all the time he was dying. What were you doing?’

‘Living,’ said Midgley.

‘He’s at peace anyway,’ said Aunty Kitty.

They went out and got his clothes. As they were walking out a young man was on the phone. ‘It’s a boy!’ he was saying. ‘A boy! Yes. Just think. I’m a father.’

They stood in the car park.

‘I suppose while we’re here,’ said Joyce, ‘we could go up home and make a start on going through his things.’

ALSO BY ALAN BENNETT

FRICTION

The Clothes They Stood Up In

PLAYS

Plays One
(Forty Years On, Getting On, Habeas Corpus, Enjoy)

Plays Two
(Kafka’s Dick, the Insurance Man, The Old Country, An Englishman Abroad, A Question of Attribution)

Office Suite
The Wind in the Willows
The Madness of King George III
The Lady in the Van

TELEVISION PLAYS
The Writer in Dialogue
Objects of Affection
(BBC)
Talking Heads
(BBC)

SCREENPLAYS
A Private Function
Prick Up Your Ears
The Madness of King George

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
The Lady in the Van
Writing Home

AFTERWORD

Father! Father! Burning Bright
was the original title of a BBC television film I wrote in 1982 but which was subsequently entitled
Intensive Care
. The main part, Midgley, had been hard to cast, though when I was writing the script I thought it was a role I might play myself until, that is, I got to the scene where Midgley goes to bed with Valery, the slatternly nurse. That, I thought, effectively ruled me out as I didn’t fancy having to take my clothes off under the bored appraisal of an entire film crew.

Not that it would have been the first time. Back in 1966 I was acting in a BBC TV comedy series I had written which included a weekly spot, ‘Life and Times in NWI’, in one episode of which I was supposedly in bed with a neighbour’s wife. The scene was due to be shot in the studio immediately after a tea break, and rather than brave the scrutiny of the TV crew, I thought that during the break I might sneak on to the set and be already in bed when the crew returned. So I tiptoed into the studio in my underpants, failing to notice that a lighting rig had been positioned behind the bedroom door. When I opened it there was an almighty crash, the lights came down and everybody rushed into the studio to find me sprawled in my underpants among the wreckage and subject to a far more searching and hostile scrutiny than would otherwise have been the case. No more bedroom scenes for me, I thought.

However, the role of Midgley proved hard to cast and after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, including what was virtually an audition, I found myself playing the part. Like some other leading roles that I have written, it verged on the anonymous, all the fun and jokes put into the mouths of the supporting characters while Midgley, whom the play is supposed to be about, never managed to be much more than morose.

It was in the hope of finding more to the character than this that I decided, before the shooting started, to write the story up in prose. When I’d finished I showed it to the director in the hope that it might help him to appreciate what the screenplay was about. He received it politely enough and in due course gave me it back, I suspect without having read it, directors tending to form their own ideas about a text, one script from the author hard enough to cope with without wanting two.

So I put it away in a drawer in 1982 where it has remained ever since. I’ve dusted it off and published it now, I suppose, as part of an effort to slim down my
Nachlass
and generally tidy up.

THE LAYING ON OF HANDS. Copyright © 2002, 2000, 1999, 1998 by Forlake Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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eISBN 9781429901024

First eBook Edition : February 2011

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“The Laying On of Hands” was first published in Great Britain by Profile Books, under the title
The Laying On of Hands.

“Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet” was first published in Great Britain by BBC as part of
Talking Heads 2.

“Father! Father! Burning Bright” was first published in Great Britain by Profile Books, under the title
Father! Father! Burning Bright.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bennett, Alan.

The laying on of hands : stories / Alan Bennett

p. cm.

Contents: The laying on of hands—Miss Fozzard finds her feet—Father! Father! Burning bright.

ISBN 0-312-29051-9 (hc)

ISBN 0-312-42225-3 (pbk)

1. Great Britain—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6052.F5 L39 2002