Authors: Alastair Campbell
In our workplaces, it sometimes feels like there are big people and there are little people. The big people are bosses. They have power and authority. But the big people can’t function without the little people. The little people can’t always do the big people’s job, but often the big people can’t do the little people’s job. The king of one country can’t get to see the king of another without drivers, pilots, security men, secretaries, typists, translators. They are all part of a team. If one part doesn’t function properly, the whole doesn’t function properly. We are all of equal worth. Not all the same, or capable of being the same, or wanting to be the same, but we are all human beings who owe our existence to others and who cannot function without others.
When a great bridge is built, we fete the person who designed it or we remember the place where it is built. But think too of all the little people who dug and carried and did the dirty work. When a great building goes up, the architect gets the glory. But I think of the little people too, the ones who put it up there. Because we should be humble.
Fear can humble. It makes us confront our limits and our mortality.
Anger can humble. It makes us small.
Poverty can humble because it sees people tolerate a life we cannot contemplate.
Change can humble for we can be reminded of past failings.
We can learn humility if we learn from mistakes.
The process of life is humbling. The human body is humbling. The human mind is humbling. Death is humbling.
There but for the grace of God and all that, that’s humbling. We could all be the down-and-out, the tramp, the battered wife, the abused woman, child, the man with the dead-end job. We should be thankful we are not, spare a thought for those who are, do what we can to help them. We are our brother’s keeper and all that.
I have no idea if this is the kind of thing you wanted me to write. I’ve gone on enough now, I think.
Sturrock sat back and closed his eyes. Then he opened them again, and read once more the ‘grace of God’ paragraph. He was none of those things, not down and out, not battered or abused, yet he felt all of those things. David was the man in the dead-end job yet what power he had to move.
As before, he struggled when confronted with David and his words to see him purely as a patient. There were times when David spoke as he spoke, articulated concepts as he might do, or even better. Sturrock noticed that there were two religious references in David’s piece, and he ended both with ‘and all that’, as if consciously trying to dismiss them. That intrigued him. At points, he seemed to be making a structured case. At others he was in stream-of-consciousness mode, but there was a sophistication to the argument that seemed completely out of keeping with someone who had left school at sixteen with one GCSE.
He reread David’s accompanying email. It was beautiful. It told him everything he needed to know about how David had been feeling. The storm had blown in, then blown out, and fundamentally, nothing had changed. What was more, David had managed to cope with the plunge himself, pull himself out of it by using techniques he had taught him. He felt so proud of him. But could he follow him?
He saw in David’s plunges the mirror image of his own. He too never knew when they would start, or how they would end, but when
they
happened, they were all-consuming, and it was impossible to imagine life in anything other than this state. The feelings were so powerful that he felt trapped, he would never be able to break free from the grip of a mood he had never asked for, but which felt like it would last forever. So the storm blew in and it raged, and he grew angry that Stella couldn’t or wouldn’t help, and he didn’t know anyone else he could reach out to, so he went in deeper and deeper on himself. But David had found a way out. Was he trying to send him a message with his talk of humility? Was there something here that he needed to learn? Suddenly he knew what he had to do. Talk to David. David would understand. If he could talk to David, perhaps he too could get to the other side of the storm. Wiping his eyes, he picked up his telephone and punched in David’s mobile number.
35
With the extra staff, the car wash was running so well that Lirim decided he could slip away for half an hour. He went and sat in Jose’s Cafe, where he ordered beans, egg and chips and a cup of coffee. While he was waiting for it to arrive, he took a postcard and pen from his pocket and laid them carefully on the table. The postcard had a view of Priština on it. It was one of the few non-essential items he had packed in his bag when they fled the city, and he’d treasured it ever since.
He’d had his Priština dream again last night. Again he’d been fishing in the Sitnica. Again, Arta brought a picnic. They started to make love in the same way. The same farmer shouted at them to get off his land. Then he’d woken up. As he blinked his eyes open, and realised he’d been dreaming, he felt the same disappointment, but deeper this time. Though the river and the farmer and the picnic had disappeared with the dream, the erection it inspired remained. It must have been about five in the morning. Arta was sleeping soundly beside him, her face turned towards him. He was close to being overwhelmed by the desire to wake her and make love to her gently.
Alban had been conceived, he was sure, on a morning when he’d woken, aroused, from a dream about Arta. It had been in a different bed and a different home in a very different country, but the moment had felt the same. Then, as now, he could feel her breath on his neck and chest, but on that distant morning he’d felt no inhibition about kissing her, little tiny kisses all over her face and shoulders. After a few seconds he’d felt her stirring alongside him, and he’d pushed back the sheets and taken his lips and his tongue over her breasts and
stomach
, and though she had not once opened her eyes she was suddenly awake and excited. It was over in minutes, and they were asleep again seconds afterwards, but it was wonderful, and when Lirim had finally woken again, he had been momentarily unsure where his dream had ended and making love with Arta had begun.
This morning, as he felt her breath on his chest, he’d wanted to relive that moment. Then it was easy. Now, it was not so easy. His wife was sleeping and she seemed at peace. If he were to do what his desire told him to, and kiss those slightly parted lips in the hope that she’d wake up with the desire she felt the night they made Alban, how could he know what her reaction might be? If he were to push back the sheets and kiss her body as he had done so many times before, how could he know that in her mind this would not be the act of another man taking her against her will? Yet to wake her properly, and simply tell her he felt this overwhelming desire, how bad might they both feel if she then said no?
He stroked her hair, softly at first, just skimming over it, then a little more firmly, running his thumb slowly around the rim of her ear, until he could feel her scalp too. He put his lips on her forehead and just left them there, blew tiny gusts of air, then blew a little harder so that a few hairs at the front of her head felt his breath too. He was now stroking her neck beneath her hair with one hand and caressing her hip with the other, and she was stirring a little. He blew a little harder on the forehead and then kissed her on the bottom lip.
‘Arta, my darling, my beautiful darling Arta,’ he whispered, ‘I want to kiss you like I used to kiss you. Is that OK?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Is that “Mmm, I’m not really awake and don’t understand what you’re saying”, or “Mmm, that would be nice”?’
‘Nice,’ she said. ‘Very nice.’
They kissed, for as long as they had kissed in his dream when kneeling by the river. He kissed only her lips and her tongue. He stroked only her neck and her hip. But then she took his hand in hers, and slid it from her hip to her belly, then lifted her own hand away to circle his penis with her fingers. He felt so happy he could have cried.
As, later, he’d left for work, he’d felt as though they had made love for the first time. He couldn’t tell if she felt the same. She seemed a little subdued. But he felt the weekend had taken them in the right direction, that things were going to get better. Sitting now in the cafe, he picked up his pen. ‘
Dear Professor Sturrock
,’ he wrote on the postcard. ‘
We have not met, but I would like to thank you for everything you have done for Arta. Yours gratefully, Lirim Mehmeti
.’ He would put it in the postbox on the way home.
36
David’s mobile went straight to voicemail. Sturrock thought about leaving a message, but then he wasn’t sure what he would say. Instead, he called the warehouse. A machine spoke to him, gave him options, and asked him to hold for an operator if none of the options applied. He held, and listened to lift music for a while. He was about to hang up when a voice finally answered.
‘Sorry for keeping you waiting. How can I help?’
‘David Temple please.’
‘Do you know which department he’s in?’
‘Packaging, I think.’
‘That’s just about everyone, sir. We’re a packaging company.’
‘Oh, I see. I don’t know.’
‘Let me see, just hold for a moment.’ The voice disappeared momentarily, and then returned.
‘He doesn’t have a line as such but I can page him. Would you like me to page him?’
‘Is that a slow process?’
‘Well, hopefully if he’s here he’ll go to the nearest phone and just check in straight away and we can connect you. Like me to do that?’
‘Yes, please. I need to speak to him quite urgently.’
Back to the lift music. It was a version of Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
, but bastardised for muzak. Odd, he thought, how something so inspiring could be made to sound so ghastly. He wondered if that was what Jack’s friend Charlie did, take beautiful music and make it ugly. He leaned back in his chair, rested the phone on his neck and closed his eyes. He would count to fifty. If David had not come to the phone
by
then, he would assume he was not there. He counted to eighty-five. No sign of David. He hung up.
He emailed him. ‘Hello David, got your email. Glad you’re feeling better, and well done on humility. Look forward to seeing your gravestone exercise. It would be good to speak to you. Please call if you get the chance.’
He was as troubled by his need to speak to David as he was by his desire to make love to Hafsatu. In both cases, he was treating a patient incorrectly, drawing them into his life for his own selfish ends. He was letting David down by putting the onus on his favourite patient to help him. Just like he let down Ralph Hall by not being able to help him save his job. Just like he let down Emily Parks and Arta Mehmeti when they stormed out last week. They were like family to him, all these people, his family, his charges, and not one of them had he served well.
He felt his panic mounting. It was tiredness, he told himself. Calm down. Breathe. Breathe deeply. Do it again. Calm. Calm. He sent David a text message – ‘
Please call
’ – and then he felt yet more guilt, because he knew that right now, this second, he needed David Temple more than David Temple needed him. He couldn’t think of anyone else who would properly understand the cauldron of clashing emotions that made him feel his head was close to ripping apart. He picked up his briefcase, put on his coat and took the lift downstairs.
There were already three people in the lift. Two were talking, but too quietly for him to be able really to hear. He felt they were deliberately trying to exclude him from their conversation. They looked like visitors. They looked as if they’d had bad news. They were sad, and whispering. He wondered if he could help, but assumed they already had a doctor looking after them, or at least looking after whoever they were visiting. The lift stopped at the third floor. The third person got out, and two more people got in. One was a hospital porter carrying an envelope marked X-rays. The other was a patient who was probably heading to the canteen. The lift stopped on the first floor. The patient got out. The porter got out. The couple were still whispering. As the lift reached the ground floor, Sturrock took the
woman
by the arm and said, ‘If there is anything I can do to help, you must let me know.’ They looked confused. They left the lift. He followed them out into the street.
He stood for a few moments, breathing in the cold air and trying to still his mind. A colleague also on his way home patted him on the shoulder. ‘See you, Martin.’ Sturrock watched him scurry away, and tried to analyse whether that was a friendly ‘See you, Martin’ or a hostile one. He concluded it was indifferent.
The traffic was grinding by and the pavements were heaving with people. The thought of going on the tube made him nauseous. He wasn’t sure he would be able to stand the noise and the dirt and the mess of people swirling around him. What if he met someone he knew? He felt talked out. He didn’t want to speak to anyone. What if some of the fragments of thought flashing around his mind led him to speak out loud, and attract those funny looks you get when you allow private thought to spill into the public space?
He checked his pockets. He had £43 and 27p. The last time he took a taxi home it cost £35. Would it have gone up by more than £8.27? Surely not. Anyway, hopefully Stella would be home so she could come out with cash if he needed more. Or would she? He remembered Ralph. He wondered if Ralph was still there. Would he have cash?
He stood on the yellow line by the pavement and waited for a cab. Dozens went by, but none had a light on. What would he do if none came by? Was it possible that every cab would be taken, for evermore, that every time one emptied, it would immediately be occupied by someone other than him? Perhaps he should move to a different street. But then perhaps the different street would become the street that never saw a vacant cab. Was this an issue of cabs, or streets? He thought maybe if he closed his eyes for a few moments, his mind would still, and a cab would come.
He stood, eyes closed, and told himself to count to ten. Don’t go beyond ten, he told himself, you might fall asleep, and if you fall asleep you might fall into the road. So count to ten. It’s not sleep but
it
is rest and it will calm the mind. But what if the cab with a light on comes during this time and you miss it? He opened his eyes again. Red buses as far as the eye could see. Black cabs, but none with lights. Cars grinding along full of people going home, or out, or to work, or to see friends, or to see an elderly relative who had to go to a funeral tomorrow.