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WRITERS EYES / ASCRIBER Uniting Writers Around The World Online Writing Group
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by
Stuart McDonald
I Remember
Why do the senses betray you? Evocative, some people call it. The smell of
frying bacon, or coffee, or toast burning. The crackle of a Spitfire's Merlin
engine at the local air show. Memories return – not always happy, or even
pleasant – and often not in themselves related to the smell or the sound. Take
music. You hear a tune, often only a snatch of it, and you are back in another
time, in another place. Mike playing old fifties hits as if they had just been
released proved my point. On and on it went, just as it had on Radio Luxemburg
all these years ago, and immediately I was there.
Homesick, or what? Eighteen years and forty one days and never been away from
home before. "Love and marriage. Love and marriage" There I was, not quite
sure which way was up, sitting in a wooden hut round a single coke-burning
stove at the end of a day of confusion and shouting. Twenty others, mostly as
naive as me, jostling for a share of the warmth and polishing boots, and
brasses, blancoing webbing belts, as if our lives depended on it. And at the
time we felt it did. "Love and marriage. Love and marriage. Go together like
a horse and carriage."
"Ah! National Service. Made a man of you." This last usually said by guys
who had never had to experience it. "You can't have one without the other."
The other day I had to have an x-ray. Nothing serious the doctor said, just a
precaution.
I eventually found the right door and pushed it open. As well as the
strip-lights, the uncomfortable shabby furniture, the unimaginative colour
scheme and the bored patients, there was that odour. It caught at the back of
my throat.
How do hospitals all manage to have the same smell? It isn't disinfectant or a
whiff of the cabbage for lunch. It certainly isn't polish but it is medicinal,
a bit like the inside of a first-aid box that has been shut for too long It
must be some special standard NHS issue "fragrance". Delivered by road-tankers
no doubt. One hundred gallons is it today Mr Smith. Unmistakeable. And
again, as I stepped inside, my memory, like a time machine, played tricks with
me. Only about five years back this time.
"Wake up, Mr Thompson. You have a visitor." I didn't think I had been sleeping but maybe the nurse was right. They usually are. But what are Sunday afternoons for anyway if not having a quiet kip? Why break the habit of a lifetime.
"David. How are you?"
I looked up, trying to think who the tall grey-haired man in the green anorak
was. He came towards the bed and put a lumpy brown-paper bag on the side table.
More bloody grapes," I thought, a bit ungratefully. But why do people always
bring grapes to hospital? There must be a massive industry just growing grapes
for hospitals all over the world. Part of the Common Agricultural Policy I
suppose. Paid for with my taxes. In any case, didn't these people know that
grapes play hell with the bladder? Well – my bladder anyway.
I'll leave them till the new curate comes in. He'll eat them. Poor sod, he
always had that half-starved pimply look to him. He'll eat anything. He
polished off half a box of Milk Tray and a banana when he was here yesterday.
Now, preaching to the converted is one thing. He has certainly enjoyed
preaching to the confined – me. Definitely a first class example of a captive
audience. These thoughts were interrupted.
"I'm sorry I wasn't here earlier," went on my visitor, "but I've only just
heard."
I looked at the clock at the end of the ward. This was almost as bad as the
curate. It was nearly three o'clock. Did he mean sorry that he hadn't been
here at half past one or sorry that he had not realised sooner that I had been
lying in this damned bed for the best part of the week?
"I must say you don't look too bad," he continued, apparently unconcerned at my
lack of response. "You are in the best place anyway."
What did he mean, the best place? I could think of any number of better
places. If he though that a foam-rubber mattress with lumps in it reminiscent
of the Himalayan foothills and stuck in the middle of a barrack room full of
loony old men was the best place to be, his must be a dreary existence.
"It was good of you to come," I said. Who was he anyway? I looked more
closely. Just over six feet and slightly stooped, probably in his late
seventies. Older than me by a good bit anyway. His long thin face with the
slightly protruding ears and a large bulbous nose gave him an oddly comic look
as he towered over me. Dark eyes partially hidden by fiercely bushy eyebrows
and underscored by pouches of loose skin hardly suggested a lively mind,
however, or much of a sense of humour either.
His bland appearance perhaps explained why he was being so conventional. He
sank slowly onto one of the Health Services' less inspired purchases, a moulded
plastic chair in a rather distasteful shade of lentil soup that he had dragged
from a corner of the room. Did that mean he was intending to stay? I didn't
bother to tell him that the chair was one the nurses put into the lavatory for
the more feeble and incontinent inmates of this paradise. I noticed the broad
soft hands and the brown spots on their backs that confirmed my earlier
thoughts about his age.
He leant towards me, almost conspiratorially. "When are you going to have it?"
he whispered.
My God. Was he off his trolley or was I? Surely he didn't think he was in
Maternity?
"Have what?" I asked, knowing as I said it that I would probably regret the
question.
Well," he told me, "you've come in for a little operation. On you arm."
"I had wondered about that," I replied as I adjusted my sling.
"The Vicar mentioned it to me," he went on, ignoring my sarcasm. "He mentioned
that you had had a slight fall."
Slight fall. Little did he, or the Vicar for that matter, know. When you try
to take the top out of an overgrown hedge, overgrown by about ten feet, you
have to be very careful where you lean the ladder. Very careful indeed. I
wasn't. When the ladder toppled it emptied me over into the river by way of a
low bounce of the top of the brick wall that marked my garden boundary. Result
– a broken fib and tib (amazing how quickly one picks up the lingo), two
cracked ribs and a collection of cuts and bruises that even impressed the
nurses. And I still have to have the ligaments in my right arm seen to. Tied
or grafted or something. Slight fall. Huh!
"Oh yes," I replied. "An operation on my arm. Yes. But not until the
swelling goes down."
"That's good," he said.
I began to wonder if I had a high temperature, was delirious even. Or maybe he
was.
"The Vicar asked us all to pray for you," he went on. "Mentioned you specially
this morning. Asked for your speedy recovery."
I realised that I was a patient and that I was in hospital and that hospital
patients are usually ill but I did feel that the Vicar had gone a little bit
over the top. There had to be something deeply meaningful about the word
patient. If it had to do with patience that was one quality I was a touch
short on. And prayers indeed. Bother the prayers – and this visit. Anyway,
why couldn't the prayers be reserved for those who really need them; poor
misbegotten souls like football supporters, or politicians, or whoever dreamed
up The Big Brother House. I shut my eyes, hoping my visitor would take the
hint that I wanted to sleep, and then he might leave. I offered up up a little
prayer of my own.
"I can see you're a bit tired," he said.
I wasn't used to such a swift response. Direct line on a Sunday I expect.
"I'll just toddle off now, but I'll come back to see you tomorrow, and I think
some of the others will come in this evening.
Just the news to cheer me up. He got up, carefully replaced the chair and
walked to the door, waved, and was gone. Peace. I eased myself down in the
bed. I didn't want to contemplate evening visiting. I had to shut the horror
of it out of my mind. After all, I had more important things to think about,
like how to ensure that the curate ate all the grapes.
Comments
Stuart, your piece of prose fulfilled all the requirements of Workshop 16 very
well. The pungent smells and then the sound of a Spitfire (which put the age of
the speaker somewhat in focus) and then smells again and an afternoon nap "as a
habit of a lifetime" (not in the army though!). Then the feel of the mattress,
lumpy and uncomfortable. The description of the unidentified hospital visitor
was vivid, he may have been one of those people who go round visiting in case a
patient has no friends or family. But he brought grapes and that set the
speaker off again (now we know he is called David) into his usual mood. Like a
drink of beer, the glass is mostly half empty and not usually half full!
A very interesting piece. Let`s read some more please.
Dorothy