The Listeners (16 page)

The phone would ring and ring, the bell shrilling out over the lifeless corpse.
Too late. Too late.
The police would have to break down the door with an axe and Mrs Groot and Olive Peace would stare from the corridor, their children peering round their legs and sucking their filthy thumbs.

Then you’ll be sorry.

Billie opened the locker drawer. Christ, there weren’t more than half a dozen aspirin in the bottle Morna had given her. Never had been. Old Morn ate them like sweets, but Billie had always been scared of drugs.

The telephone rang. As Billie snatched it to her ear, she noticed that her hand was trembling, the palm hot and sticky.

‘Is that Billie?’

Suffer.

‘Billie – are you there?’

Billie almost put down the telephone. Now that she heard Victoria’s voice, it did not seem so important any more, what she wanted to tell her.

‘I can hear you breathing,’ Victoria said, either crossly or anxiously. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Hullo,’ Billie said gloomily. ‘I suppose you’re angry because I made them wake you up.’

‘No, I’m not, really.’

‘You said ring any time I felt rotten. Well, I feel rotten now.’

‘Oh dear, why?’

‘Well look, it’s that bloody Fettiche. My boss, I told you. I’m going off this afternoon, gone four, very late as it was, and don’t think there’s any talk of overtime when it takes so long to clear up after those tramps. “Back at six, Camilla Cripps,” he says, “don’t forget.” “What do you mean?” “You know as well as I do it’s Committee night.’

‘ he says. “I don’t.” “You do.” “If I do, I don’t want to.” Back at six to do the sandwiches and coffee. What do they
think I am? Are you there? Victoria? What do they think I am?’

‘I don’t know. Is that what you wanted to ask me?’

‘Don’t be sharp, dear. You know it’s Thursday. Morna’s half day. She goes to the shops and as soon as I’m off, I go round to her place and get the supper started. She’s not much at cooking, see, it’s our regular thing. And we go to the Odeon, whatever’s on, because that was where we met.’

‘What is on?’

‘Victoria, you’re not listening. That’s not the
point.
The point is I had to go to work. On a Thursday. And you ask me why I feel rotten. We were going to a party last night, me and Morna. Some of her friends from last summer. She said she’d go anyway.’

‘Mm-hm.’

‘Oh, it’s not that I don’t
trust
her, don’t think that.’ Billie went on for a while, watching herself in the mirror, lips squirming in the ugly way lips did when you looked at them on their own, not as part of a face. Victoria murmured, and once she yawned. ‘You’re not interested, are you?’ Billie said. ‘You don’t care.’

‘Yes I do, really.’

‘Fat help to me.’

‘Well God, Billie.’ Victoria’s voice woke up. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Sorry, sorry.’ It was always enough to have goaded her to answer back, as a real friend would. ‘It’s just that I can’t sleep, and when I do, the dreams I have, you wouldn’t believe. Tonight I dreamed there was an old man begging in the street. He hadn’t got any legs, just a sort of tray on wheels and he pushed himself along with his arms like a monkey. Well, you know what that means, it means someone is telling lies about you. So I got up and got a drink and here I am.’

‘Worried about Morna?’

‘No, I
trust
her, I told you. But she’s got a lot of friends, you know, and – I don’t know – the girls where I work, they’re either married and dumb, first baby coming,
or old grans with knitting patterns falling out of their bags, you know the type. And the people in these flats, dear, you wouldn’t credit. I’m going to have to look for another place. Morna and I are talking of sharing, if we can find what we want. You seen
Faces?
Where they keep walking down those passages with the walls coming at them, that’s the sort of flat we could have. Where she chucks up in the shower. I cried for her.’

‘So did I. Let’s go to the cinema some time, Billie, you and me. Shall we? It would be nice to meet.’

Billie stared at the tilted mirror, and the Billie that Victoria would meet stared glumly back.

No fear.

‘
Dear Mrs King, ... should like you to attend the first preparation class at the Samaritan Centre at 6.30
...’
The date had hung before Sarah like a prize, foreshortening the days between.

‘Where are you going, my Sarah?’

‘I told you. It’s the first preparation class.’

‘Is that why you’re wearing a gym tunic?’

‘It’s called a jerkin. Can I have the car?’

‘Yes, darling.’ Brian clutched her. ‘Don’t go.’

‘That’s not fair. Wait till I get home.’

‘What makes you think I’ll still want you?’

‘You’d better.’

They talked like this about sex. It wasn’t very real. But it was better than people who never talked about it at all, just did it.

The class was held in the big downstairs room at the Samaritan Centre. Clients who came in that evening had to go upstairs, When Sarah went in, the wide hall was full of people in coats, all ages and types, looking confused. You could not tell if they had come for the class or to get help. Two girls were taking chairs into the big room, and presently everyone was in there, about a dozen people facing the desk at the back, where a youngish man with receding hair was looking carefully over the group as if it were a cattle auction.

‘Is it a meeting?’ whispered a young man who had come in with the others from the hall and sat down next to Sarah.

‘It’s a class for volunteers. Are you one?’

‘Well, actually.’ The young man desperately tried to find one tiny piece more nail to bite. ‘I’m supposed to be seeing someone called Ralph. I talked to him on the phone yesterday. Ralph, 255, he said.’

‘We could ask him.’ Sarah nodded to the man behind the desk, who was waiting while people scraped chairs and took off coats and lit cigarettes and were extraordinarily polite to each other, like examination candidates not knowing yet who would pass and who fail.

‘I am one of the deputy directors of this branch of the Samaritans.’ The man at the desk stood up. ‘You can call me 200. We use Christian names and numbers, see, but with a name like mine, I just use a number.’

Sycophantic laughter from a perpetually smiling lady with her head on one side. If she thought that would get her into the Samaritans...”

The young man looked anguished, so Sarah stood up and explained.

‘Ralph? Oh yes, he’s upstairs.’

‘Shall I take him? I know the way.’

‘Thanks. That would be fine.’

Sarah took the young man out, and handed him over to a Samaritan at the top of the stairs. Sarah King? Oh yes, that’s the girl who was helpful her very first day. Good sign that.

She went quietly back into the room. 200 had started to talk, head back, reading the ceiling for words. He did not notice her come in.

‘If you want statistics,’ he said, ‘you can look them up. I can’t be bothered with them. They don’t make pictures for me, and I don’t suppose they do for you either.’ He brought his eyes down and set them on a restless woman in a sleek fur jacket like a labrador, without apparently seeing her. ‘People kill themselves. For some reason – well, for obvious reasons, I suppose, seeing what a mullock
we’ve made of the world – suicide is increasing. A thousand a day, they reckon. And about eight thousand try it.’

The lady with her smiling head on one side shook it gently to show she cared.

‘And that’s an underestimate, because it often gets hushed up and reported as something else. Heart attack. Cleaning his gun. Took the wrong medicine bottle. Coroners are human too.’ He had a slow simple way of talking, the easy unhurried accent of a countryman, the consonants soft, no pinched city sharpness in the vowels.

‘In a big mixed-up town like this one where you get all kinds of people doing all kinds of things in all kinds of conditions, there are all kinds of reasons why some of them come to the end of their tether. We rank about fifth or sixth in Great Britain in that department. All right.’ When he smiled, his long thoughtful face shifted into engaging new angles. ‘I said I wouldn’t bother with statistics. I won’t. Give you just one more though, in case you want to know how the Samaritans got started. About twenty years ago, the man who founded it, the Reverend Chad Varah, heard that there were at least three suicides a day in London. Ought to do something about that, he thought, and he hit on the idea of an emergency telephone service for the desperate, like you can dial 999 if your house is on fire or you trip over the cat and break a leg. It had to be that sort of easy number that people could remember. Something like 9000. Mansion House 9000, since he was going to run it from his church, St Stephen’s Walbrook, in the City. It had been damaged in the Blitz. Under the rubble somewhere was a telephone. When the rector dug it out and wiped off the dust, it already had the number he wanted, Mansion House 9000. Yes.’ He nodded to the murmur that came from his audience of about a dozen men and women, the youngest Sarah and the two girls with waterfall hair from the University, the oldest a bald grandfatherly man in a tweed suit like market day. ‘It was a miracle, you could say. That’s how it started. There are more than a hundred
branches in this country now. This is one of the biggest. And the best, of course.’ he added, meaning it, not smiling.

‘Number 100, Peter, he’s the Director of this branch. You’ll meet him next week. He and Ralph, 255, and myself,
200,
we act as counsellors, with consultants, psychiatrists, doctors, lawyers, social workers behind us. But the main thing of the Samaritans is – the Samaritans. People like you. Ordinary people. That’s where the need is. Ordinary people who know about love and tolerance and friendship. It’s the reaching out of one human being to another. A sharing of – well, love is what it is if you want it in one word.’

He watched the faces of his audience. They watched him. The lopsided lady had relaxed her smile. The restless young woman with the black fur jacket and short black hair was still, her foot not swinging, her hands clasped round her knee.

‘No problem,’ he went on, ‘can be solved completely. But if there is love, you see, each problem can be tackled and dealt with, perhaps in some ramshackle way that’s better than nothing. Better than going under. We can’t run people’s lives for them. But we can try to put them in the way of doing it a bit better themselves. We try to give them back themselves. By being here. By paying attention. By listening. Those of you who get accepted as Samaritans’ – his eyes moved from one to the other as if he had decided already: you, not you, perhaps you? - ’you will learn that there’s only one thing you have to learn. All the rest follows. You listen, that’s all. All you have to learn, my dears, is just to listen.’

The ‘my dears’ was not affected nor irritatingly folksy. It was natural and comfortable. How could Sarah ever explain this man to Brian? Should she even begin to try?

How can I make it sound like this? If I can’t, he won’t understand. He might even – yes, if he’s wanting to be funny and cynical, he might even ... scoff.

The stab of guilt with which she thought that of him
was almost as if she had wished him dead.

‘Any questions at this point?’ 200 rubbed his eyes, pinching them at the corners and stretching his face as if he had just taken off glasses.

The labrador girl lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke at him from her determined underlip. ‘What do we do? I mean, what are the duties? It’s all so vague.’

‘I know. Sorry, Meredith, I’m a lousy lecturer. The thing is, it’s hard to explain it, but it all gets quite clear when you start to work here.’

‘
If
we start,’ one of the college girls put in, without looking up from her knitting, a brown mass of something like a muffler which even her lover surely would never wear. ‘How do you pick who you pick?’

‘We just sort of – know.’ He spread his hands. ‘Some people are natural Samaritans. It sticks out a mile. These classes are not only for instruction. They help us to find out about you.’

Some of the people tried to make their faces look kind.

‘There’ll be a test at the end, a faked distress call to see how you answer. But don’t panic. Even if you mess that up, you’ll get taken, if you’re the right kind.’

‘But what do we
do?
’ Meredith asked again.

‘Easiest thing is to explain what you
don’t
do. With clients, either on the phone or when they come in here – let’s see.’ He ticked off his fingers. ‘You don’t judge. You don’t get shocked. You don’t talk about yourself: “Oh yes, my aunt died of that last February.” You don’t sit round and gossip with other volunteers. It’s hard enough for someone in trouble to come through that door. If he finds a jolly group of people coffee-housing in here, he may go out and never be seen again. What else? You don’t probe. You try to find out what you can about a client, but not third degree. Name, address, black, white, co-habiting, have you been vaccinated. If he wanted that, he’d go to a government agency. He doesn’t want it. That’s why he comes to us. You don’t preach. You don’t criticize. If he says, “I just raped my stepsister,” you don’t say, “Oh how dreadful, you shouldn’t have done that.”’

‘What
do
you say?’ From a man at the back of the room.

‘Nothing really.’ 200 sent him an innocent smile. ‘You go mm-hm, or, “Tell me about it,” or something. Show him that you’ll listen if he wants to talk about it. He probably does. That’s why he’s here. Because he can’t tell anyone else. And when it’s told, you don’t give instant advice. You don’t say, “If I were you, I’d do so and so.” He’s not you. If he were, he wouldn’t be in his particular kind of trouble.’

Meredith ground out her cigarette into the coffee-jar lid she was using as an ashtray. ‘You’ve told us a lot about what we don’t do,’ she said aggressively. ‘But you still haven’t said what we do.’

‘You listen.’ 200 remained unprovoked. ‘You listen and you try to—’

‘Anyone can listen.’

‘They can’t. You’re not listening to me now.’

‘I am, but it’s all so negative.’