The Facts of Life
Authors: Patrick Gale
The Facts of Life
For Tom Wakefield, whose friendship shelters
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The Writing of
The Facts of Life
by Patrick Gale
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I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self
And the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help
and patience, and a certain difficult repentance
long, difficult repentance, realisation of life’s mistake, and the freeing oneself
from the endless repetition of the mistake
which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.
D.H. Lawrence,
Healing
1
She heard him before she saw him. She was on her round of Godiva Ward, checking on the children, listening to coughs, peering into pinched, white faces, tapping and listening at scrawny chests, when the sound of piano-playing reached her from the day room. There was an old grand piano there, half hidden by potted palms, one of several vestiges of the hospital’s former grandeur as a superior hotel. It was rarely tuned and suffered from sea air, being surrounded by so many open windows. Someone accompanied the carols on it at Christmas, the children played musical statues to it at birthday parties and occasionally a charitable local artiste would subject them to a recital of pieces with evocative titles like
War March of the Priests, Rustle of Spring
or
Moscow Bells
. Pub-style sing-songs were, of course, out of the question, given the ragged state of most inmates’ lungs, but patients chancing on the venerable instrument for the first time sometimes lifted the lid out of curiosity to pick out a melody with one erratic finger. Vera Lynn songs were popular –
White Cliffs of Dover
and
We’ll Meet Again
– but Sally had noticed that it was the older, less overtly morale-boosting songs that people thumped out time and again –
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
or
You’ve Got me Crying Again
.
The music this morning was serious stuff, played sitting down, and with both hands. She knew little of proper music – her father always switched the radio off when a concert was broadcast – but she recognised a waltz when she heard one. Gentle, lilting, ineffably sad, the sound made her pause as she was questioning a nurse about one of the more pathetic, long-stay patients.
‘Brahms,’ said the nurse, who had also cocked her head to listen. ‘It’s probably all he knows.’
‘Who?’
‘Edward the Gerry. Funny that. Edward.’ The nurse tried the name out in her mouth like an alien sweet. ‘It’s not a Jewish name at all, when you think about it,’ she added. ‘More English, really. But you can tell he is. Jewish, I mean. Tell at a glance. But then I can always spot them.’
‘When did he arrive?’
‘Last week. They transferred him from that military hospital at Horton Down.’
‘Is he Forces, then?’
‘Only just. He’d only started his basic training when he was diagnosed. How he got through his medical is anyone’s guess. I suppose they were less fussy towards the end. Like I say, he’s German. He was in that internment camp at Westmarket, on the racecourse, and he reckons that’s where he contracted it. Pretty rough down there by all accounts. Criminal really. I mean, it’s not as though he was likely to be a spy, but I suppose they couldn’t be too careful.’
No-one in the hospital referred to tuberculosis by its proper name or even its abbreviation. Even now that there was a cure and a vaccine, there was still a sense of it being a
dirty
disease. ‘It’ was quite sufficient, in any case, because few patients were brought in for any other illness.
‘Isn’t Horton Down closed now?’ Sally pursued.
‘He was one of the last patients.’ The nurse dropped her voice. ‘I think they’d rather forgotten about him, poor lad.’
She saw him for the first time the next day. Unlike the children’s ward, where a dormitory had been imposed on what had once been a huge, ground floor saloon, the men’s and women’s wards afforded patients more privacy. Long wings were flung out on either side of the main body of the building. The bedrooms, forty in all, now sleeping two or three apiece, were ranged along their seaward sides. The incongruously well-appointed bathrooms across each corridor faced inland. A broad balcony linked the bedrooms along the front of the building and, during the conversion to a hospital, this had been scantily glassed over so as to afford a bracing promenade. Here those patients too weak to take even gentle exercise in the windswept grounds were expected to take the air for hours at a time. Swathed in dressing-gowns and blankets, they lay in tidy ranks on wooden reclining chairs, gossiping quietly, reading, playing cards or staring mournfully out to sea and gulping the salt air like so many beached fish. A trellis partition, painted an unpleasantly acidic green, which stretched half-way across the floor at the promenade’s middle, was intended to indicate where the men’s ward ended and the women’s began but did little to prevent fraternisation between the sexes.
Beside the trellis, on the men’s side, crouched an imposing radiogram, its wood bleached by the sun. It was turned on after breakfast and only silenced after the evening meal. It was tuned to
Worker’s Playtime
when Sally emerged from the landing. She was struck afresh by the resemblance of the scene about her to the deck of some liner, tourist class. She had never been on a cruise, but she had seen them in plenty of films and during the war she had worked briefly on a hospital ship pressed into service from the Cunard Line.
A young nurse approached her, rubber soles squeaking on blood-red linoleum.
‘Can I help you, Miss?’
Most nurses found it hard to call another woman Doctor.
‘Yes. I’m looking for Edward Pepper.’
‘He’s up at the end there.’
‘The one on his own, writing at the table?’
‘That’s the one.’
He looked far younger than she had expected. He was thin, but he had thick black hair which curled slightly and the sea air from the open windows all around him had touched his pale cheeks with a surprisingly deep pink. He worked intently at a pad of paper with a ruler and pencil. His forearms and wrists, off which he had pushed his dressing-gown sleeves, were thickly furred. As she drew closer, she saw that he was writing music. She stopped at his elbow.
‘Mr Pepper?’
‘Yes?’
As he looked up, his eyes ran over her and his lips parted slightly.
‘I’m Dr Banks.’
‘Are you another specialist?’
‘Nothing so exalted, I’m afraid. I’m somewhere between houseman and consultant. We’ve been chronically understaffed since the war and the hierarchy’s crumbled rather in the effort to get things done. Can I sit down?’
‘Of course.’
She took the other chair and opened his file.
‘How are you feeling today?’
‘Better. A little tired.’
‘You’re one of the lucky ones. We got hold of you in time.’
‘So everyone keeps telling me. How much longer will I have to stay here?’
‘Two or three weeks.’
He sagged with disappointment.
‘That long?’
‘The virus has left you very weak. You feel tired and you’ve only just got up. It’ll be some time before you’re as strong as you used to be, Mr Pepper. You must know that. Your left lung is permanently damaged. A touch of bronchitis that would have other men reaching for cough mixture will probably lay you up in bed struggling for air. For now you need rest, good clean air, nutritious meals and just enough exercise to strengthen your cardiovascular system. Have you been taking walks?’
‘I walk for an hour after lunch. Round and round.’
‘Good.’
‘It is extremely dull.’
‘But you aren’t letting the boredom get you down.’
She indicated the pad of paper on his table which he had covered in lines and little marks.
‘No.’
‘Can I ask what you’re working on?’
‘It’s a string quartet.’
‘Oh.’ Her mind went blank for a moment, then all she could picture was the three old women sawing away in the foyer of the Grand in Rexbridge, where her mother liked to go for tea on special occasions. ‘Do you play?’ she asked.
‘No. I write. Well. I try to.’ He smiled to himself. His eyes were sleepy and slightly hooded, the skin of the eyelids darker than his pale brow.