Alfie Read online

  Once you know you ain’t going to die it’s funny how soon you pull back to normal. Mind you, I’ll never forget that first night in the sanatorium – my pillow was all wet with tears. I turned my face into it, so’s nobody would hear me, and I sobbed my little heart out. What I thought about mostly was how I was lost amongst strangers and at the same time there was all these birds that loved me, who I’d only to raise a finger to and they would do anything for me. But we were separated and they could do nothing for me. And I didn’t really like any of the nurses at first, except this one, and she was a bit crippled, leastways she had a funny hip or leg or something. She was really a staff nurse, and she was the only one who gave me a special look. When I say special I don’t mean anything very special, but that look a woman gives you with her eyes that she ain’t handing out to every Tom, Dick and Harry. I was very thankful for that little look. I felt like saying to her: ‘Why don’t you and me go off an’ live together in a little cottage somewhere and you just nurse me and nobody else?’

  The fact is, when you’ve got this T.B., you might be weak, but you’ve got this temperature, and when you see these fine strapping nurses stooping over beds and that, you can hardly stop yourself from getting out and going at them. You find yourself thinking of nukky night and day – and it’s all around you, but you can’t have any. Now I always say it’s something you should never think about – you should have it. Thinking of it is unhealthy. In fact, it’s unclean, if you see what I mean. Although that might be coming it a bit too strong.

  When I’m in a position like that, I mean amongst a lot of other men in a bunch, it seems my soul shrivels right up into a tiny little nut or something and it’s as though I’m a child longing for its Mum again. I’m definitely the sort of bloke that needs a woman around, because a bunch of men are just a lot of berks, so far as I’m concerned. Then about midnight on this first night I must’ve started dozing off when I hears this bloke in the next bed to me yell out: ‘Who’s that? – Who’s there? – Who is it?’ And a woman said: ‘It’s me – Nurse!’ ‘Oh sorry, Nurse,’ he said, ‘I thought it was my wife, Lily – she has a way of walking about the home doing jobs when I’m half asleep. I must have been dreaming about her. Good night.’ One time I’d have thought, you poor soppy bastard, why don’t you catch up with yourself? But I didn’t on this night, I thought instead: I know how you feel, my old son.

  The next thing it started raining heavy and I could hear all these dripping sounds of the raindrops hitting the leaves on trees and dropping off dripping on to the ground. It sounded so lonely, it did.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Now when morning came round and the Night Nurses started washing one or two of the patients and handing out wash bowls to others and the tea came round and everything got going with the Day Nurses coming on duty and the sun shone through the windows, life began to look a bit different for me. There were one or two blokes that thought themselves comics and they started pulling the nurses’ legs, and everybody is calling out Jack, Joe, Len and Alfie as though you’d known each other all your lives, I found that I was joining in and after a day or two I was one of the gang.

  It was an eye-opener to me, mixing with the different sorts in there, and chatting them up. I will say this for hospitals, they make for sociability. There were these two blokes, civil servants, one in the Ministry of Pensions and the other worked in Whitehall, not topdogs, mind you, clerks of some kind, earning about nine hundred a year or a thousand topweight, and how they ever got T.B. I do not know, but it certainly couldn’t have been the work: they were underfed, I reckon. Course they were both buying their own houses, one at Bexley Heath and the other near Dulwich, and after paying thirty years or more they’d actually own them. You know the sort of bloke I mean, leaves home every morning with his dark suit and umbrella, Daily Telegraph, and a strict ration of half a dozen fags in a packet, one to smoke on the train, another after morning coffee, one and a half over lunch and so on. God help them if a mate – I mean a colleague – borrows one. They might occasionally celebrate of a Friday, say if England wins the Ashes, and they’ll be so carried away they’ll go into a pub for a drink. Sure enough they’ll both have a touch of the shoelace – stoop down fastening their shoes when it’s time to pay. Mind you, they love their own little lives.

  They were nearly always talking about money, in one form or another, about the best buys in Which and so on. At one time I heard them talking about insurance. One was saying what a contented mind it gave him to know the wife and kids would be well looked after if he snuffed it. Then the other says what a marvellous bargain he’d struck with one insurance company – so far as he could make out he couldn’t lose, and if he were to die within the next five years he’d show a big profit – not that he did want to die, but it was as well to know that if he did he’d got the better of the insurance company. So from insurance they went on to death, and one said he’d left strict orders to be cremated, it being very thoughtless in these times for blokes to get buried, what with all the shortage of land. He went on to say how comforting it was to think that the nation would be able to grow a few extra cabbages in the space his grave would have taken up. I never saw blokes worrying so much about how the world would carry on after they’d gone. The other said he agreed, but as there was room for one in his Mum and Dad’s grave he felt it would be a pity if it went to waste.

  Same as I say, though, when you know you’re not going to die you quickly grab the oars and pull yourself back to normal. I’d been thinking of God and death and how if what the teachers at school told me, and the Bible were true, I’d definitely be in for it. It seemed I had very little to show for my life on earth. But who has? I remember once going on one of the cheap holiday fortnights to Majorca (what don’t turn out as cheap as you think), and on the plane we’re all knocking back this tax-free whisky, when the thought struck me: Suppose we should crash? That would mean you’d go in front of the Judgement Seat (that’s allowing there is one) and you’d be pissed to the wide, and the Archangel or somebody would say, You’ve been thirty years down there and you come before your God as drunk as a’soles. What a liberty to take! Know what – I never touched another drop the entire flight!

  Mind you, I wasn’t sorry for the things I’d done so much as now it seemed a waste of time to have done them. I reckoned that if I had my lot to come over again I’d have tried to live different. Not, when I came to look at it, that there would have been much chance. You can only be what you are, leastways that’s what you tell yourself. I didn’t have these thoughts all the time, but they had a way of sneaking up on me between seven and nine of an evening before Nurse gave me my sleeping tablet.

  But once I felt the old blood hurrying along through my veins again, and woke up of a morning feeling nice and chipper, all them things blew clean out of my mind. Course it doesn’t half change your way of thinking being in a place like this – next to death’s door. I could honestly recommend for anybody to get a bit close to death, it makes you see life better. Not too close, it ain’t comfortable.

  I used to think money was everything. I really did. I’ve said money was everything. If you’ve got money, I used to think, you can have everything, handsome suits, your own car, lovely nosh-ups and beautiful birds – now what more does any man in his right mind want. But now it turns out it’s not so. All those things are not a bit of use without your good health. What’s the use of ten thousand nicker in the bank and you’ve got a great horrible pain in the guts? I’ve come to see that your health is of primary importance.

  Here, I’ve looked through this window in the sanatorium and I’ve watched one bloke sweeping up the leaves along the path. Now in civil life I wouldn’t have looked twice at a bloke like that. In fact my eyes wouldn’t have even seen him. I’d have struck him off the list of things to see; I’d have put him as being beneath consideration. He’s earning twelve quid a week, or say, at a pinch, we’ll put it up to fifteen for him, with overtime; and he’s out in all weathers
, day in, day out, year in, year out, just sweeping up leaves. Just think of it! Never a change – always, or nearly always, the old broom handle in his hand. On top of which he’s probably got a great hulking fat wife at home who spends all day rabbiting with the neighbours and dashes in ten minutes before he’s due home and starts rushing about making out she’s been at it all day. Like as not she’d had half her inside taken out on the National Health, her sort usually have, just to attract attention. Whenever she does cook she makes him these horrible home-made dinners of stinking stuffed heart or something what you can still taste a fortnight after you’ve had it. He’s got three or four real ugly kids, perhaps more, since he couldn’t be more miserable if he had a dozen, and they’ve never done wanting. Into the bargain he’s paying for one to learn the piano, another to pass exams, and no doubt he’s got a real fat-ankled, toffee-nosed daughter who wants to be a ballet dancer. And of course, from Mum down they all despise poor old Dad for being a streetsweeper. I don’t have to go on – you must know the sort of family I mean. Now I’ve watched that man through the window for many an hour on end, sweeping up leaves, coaxing the odd difficult turd on to his shovel, and in my heart I’ve envied him. I’ve envied him being out in the fresh air for one thing, whilst I was in bed. I’ve envied the energy he had to push that big sweeping brush about when I’ve hardly the energy to sit up. And I’ve envied him his health. And I’ve even envied him getting into bed every night with this great slut of a wife and having it off. Oh the things I could tell about myself if I were to let myself go!

  I’ve thought, Alfie, it doesn’t matter what problems you’ve got or how simple your little life is, if you’ve got your good health you’re not too badly off.

  Here, there’s this chap in the next bed to me, a bloke of thirty-five, called Harry Clamacraft, comes from Maidenhead – he’s married with three kids. His wife comes every Sunday and brings him her own marmalade. Shocking stuff, chew, chew, chew – digestive biscuits what give you indigestion, and a load of such rubbish. But she’s a nice, land woman, see, and they’re gone on one another. Harry – Lily: Lily – Harry, they’re each other’s world, together with the kids.

  I remember one particular Sunday, he’s sitting up there in bed waiting for Lily to visit him. He’s had nothing else on his mind since the Sunday before, and I’m watching him as he pretends he’s reading, and yet I know he’s got his ear cocked listening for her footsteps, because you get as you can tell everyone. I also know that it’s an odds-on bet she’ll be late. After all, she’s got these three kids to attend to before she leaves home.

  Now this Harry is a real decent bloke – though not the sort of chap I’d care to mix with. He’s a motor mechanic, see, and for months on end he’s been working overtime every night till about ten o’clock. This is so they can buy their own home and pay for all the furniture they’ve bought on the knocker, and of course he’s making his guv’nor a fortune in the bargain – the way these garages overcharge these days – and he’s paying his bit of income tax to help the country keep going. You can bet that about three-quarters of Harry’s money is spoken for before he even begins to think about himself. Now the next thing, poor Harry goes down with T.B., which puts an end to all his striving. What’s the answer? – I don’t think I’ll ever know.

  Anyway, being in the bed next to him I’ve been watching him and studying him, and I can see that he’s been worrying that much about his wife, and his family, and their little home, and the payments on it, and even about his guv’nor, and his job, that I get to wondering whether Harry is ever going to go out of this place alive. I mean they’ve got T.B. pretty well tied up these days, what with all the new drugs and that, but if you get one chap worrying it seems nothing in this world will get him right.

  I know there’s no visitors coming to see me, so I can relax. I’ve written and told everyone that I know that I’m on silence. Not allowed to speak, see. What a stroke, eh? Well, to be quite frank I didn’t write that straight off; in fact I’ll admit I was longing to have some mate or some bird call and see me when I was first in. So I wrote a few letters off and I got replies from some saying that they were coming as soon as they had a clear Sunday. Course the clear Sunday never came round. So I wrote back and told them not to come, that I wasn’t allowed to speak. I’ve got my pride.

  I decided this was a very good little tactic of mine because I’d be propped up there in my bed just watching how nervous and eager the others were waiting for their wives and friends to come. In that way they all let themselves get dependent on these others coming, and I believe it doesn’t do to be dependent on anybody in this life. Once you get dependent you’re a free man no more. And after all, who wants visitors? They bring their flowers and fruit and whatnot, and they tell you how well you’re looking, and they’ve only been with you for about five minutes when their eyes begin to shift about from one spot to another, up and down the ward, and you can see they’re dying for that bell to go so’s they can get away. I’ve watched them closely. Then they’ve no sooner got out of the door than they say to each other: ‘Coo, did you see poor old Ned? Don’t he look rough! I didn’t like the look in his eyes. Did you see the way he kept fingering the sheets. Keep them insurance policies dusted. Don’t throw that black hat away.’ This is not kid, I’ve actually heard them. You can’t blame them, because after all they’re only human.

  Now on this afternoon I have in mind I’m already up and about in my dressing-gown, and Harry’s sitting propped up in bed pretending to be reading, and of course the bell’s gone and they all come flocking in, except Lily, Harry’s wife, when I spots one chap called Joe Holland, a retired cab-driver.

  ‘Howgo, Joe,’ I said. ‘How’re things?’

  ‘Rotten,’ said Joe.

  ‘Is the old stomach playing you up, Joe?’

  ‘We’re playing one another up,’ said Joe.

  They’re nearly all the same these old taxi-drivers, they’ve all got bad stomachs. ‘Are you just off visiting old Hardbattle?’ I said.

  ‘Yeh, I’ve brought him these apples,’ he said.

  ‘But he ain’t got no teeth, Joe,’ I said.

  ‘That’s why I’ve brought ’em,’ said Joe. ‘He never was any bleedin’ good.’

  ‘What do you come for, Joe,’ I said, ‘if you don’t like him?’

  ‘I feel happier with people I don’t like,’ said Joe. ‘Then it gets me out of the house on a Sunday, which is quite a job in these days. And of course it does me a world of good to see that basket lying there on his back and me still on my two feet. The worse he is the better, I feel when I leave him.’

  Now I’ve just been talking about money and here’s a very good example in this Joe Holland, of how once you get hold of money it gets hold of you. He once told me when he was young he scrimped and saved every penny, he worked all the hours God sent and he never had time for a decent meal.

  Old Joe tucked the apples under his arm and rubbed the palms of his hands across his stomach and let out a little groan.

  ‘Why don’t you see a Doc about your stomach, Joe?’

  ‘I’ve seen dozens. I’ve even paid. I’ve been to Harley Street. They can’t do you a blind bit of good once the stomach lining’s gone. I’ll bet I’ve got a score or more bottles of medicine on the kitchen shelf. I never know which one to take. You can bet this, if a medicine’s going to ease you now it’ll cause you pain later.’

  ‘What they call the side-effects,’ I said. ‘How did you get it, Joe?’

  ‘Keeping the wheels turning. I never had time to stop for a decent meal. I never went on a holiday or nothing.’

  ‘How was that, Joe?’ I’ve heard it all before, but it costs nothing and it gets the visiting period over.

  ‘Saving up, see. I’d got it into my head I’d retire early, and I told the missus we’d get a little bungalow down by the sea at Peacehaven once the kids were off our hands. I was very ambitious, see. She was always wanting to go on holiday but I kept saying as how it
would hold us back. I didn’t like breaking into it, see, I mean my capital. The more you have the more you want. Money’s a drug, and the ambition kept me going.’

  ‘Mind if I have one of your apples, Joe?’ I said.

  ‘Help yourself,’ said Joe. ‘You’ll find them on the sour side.’

  I took a bite of the apple.

  ‘I envy you your teeth,’ said Joe.

  ‘Won’t old Hardbattle be waiting for you?’ I said.

  ‘Nah, he’s just about as glad to see me as I am to see him.’

  ‘You were telling me you were saving all this money up, Joe. What happened?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got a few hundred in the Post Office Savings, see, and some in building societies, and I decide to buy some brewery shares seeing as how everybody I know seems to spend half his money on beer, and of course I’ve got some money hidden away in places where the Income Tax bloke can’t get his hands on it. I mean for a taxi-driver I’m quite nicely fixed.’

  He stopped. ‘Go on, Joe,’ I said, ‘what happened?’

  ‘Well, one Sunday dinner time my poor missus goes and kicks the bucket. Just like that. Heart, see.’

  ‘Get off, Joe!’ I said. He words it a bit different every time, but in the main it’s the same story.

  ‘Yeh, the dinner all ready to serve, the joint out of the oven, the gravy made, and she just slumps off on the kitchen floor like that. I can’t remember what she last said to me. It was as though she’d gone off and left me without a word. And yet in all the years she never once missed waving me off through the window.’

  ‘Did you miss her, Joe?’

  ‘Oh, terrible! – especially after the funeral. That’s when you feel it,’ said Joe. ‘We weren’t all that fond of each other but we were very close, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘I’d just turned sixty-five, ready to retire,’ he went on, ‘and I found the day traffic getting a bit dodgy, and what with all the one-way streets and the traffic blocks, I decide to go on nights. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t been sleeping the same without my missus.’