Talking Heads, page 19
So the upshot is I’ve started toddling up the road with my trusty secateurs. Thought I’d cut back the poppies now that they’ve flowered and give the achillea a chance to come through. Of course, I’ve scarcely got my kneeling pad down before Miss Lumsden’s out, contriving to come by with an unconvincing bottle of Lucozade en route for the bottle bank. Wants to know if there are any sweet peas going begging. I said I’d thought of picking some and taking them down to the hospice. She said ‘What a nice idea. Some people might feel a bit funny about them but I suppose they’re too far gone to care.’
And lots of jokes of course. On the lines of Mr Pemberton’s ‘Who do I have to shoot for you to come and do my garden?’ Smile got a bit fixed after a bit. Except that Sheila Blanchard did actually come in and lend a hand weeding the borders. Said she didn’t blame her a bit. ‘I mean husbands, Rosemary. Who needs them?’ I said, ‘Well, they can be a comfort.’ She said, ‘Can they? Reggie isn’t. I’m the comfort merchant. What’s Henry like?’ ‘Oh,’ I said ‘very…’ and I said such a silly word ‘very considerate.’ I saw her smile and she’s a nice woman but I know it’ll be all up and down the road by tomorrow.
But he is considerate. Timid, I suppose. Always has been. Wish he wasn’t sometimes.
What I haven’t told Henry is that I dropped Mrs McCorquodale a note to the prison, bringing her up to date on what I’ve been doing. I do it every day now, in fact, even send her snaps. Told her today I was keeping an eye on the alchemilla mollis, lovely plant but you have to read it the riot act occasionally.
She rang this afternoon to thank me. I didn’t know you could do that in prison, ring up. Her name’s Fran.
‘Dear Fran…’
FADE.
The conservatory.
I’ve misjudged Henry. Got him quite wrong. Thirty years of marriage and you think you’ve got somebody all weighed up but no. He’s lost half a stone while the case has been going on – and never set foot in the office. I thought, well, you’re a better person than ever I thought you were. I said to Fran, ‘He’s more worried about you than he’s ever been about me.’ I mean the day I had my scan he went off to a golf tournament.
So as a reward I got out the brochures for Marbella and that seemed to cheer him up.
It’s all come out in court, though. Turns out that Mr has led her a dog’s life. Literally. The defence produced the collar and lead in evidence. Beat her. Terrorised her. ‘A saga of protracted and imaginative cruelty’ counsel said.
The prosecution, of course, goes after her, claiming it was all part of some game, sexually speaking, and that the cruelty was what she wanted. But she said if it had been mutual he wouldn’t have been interested. Anyway how is it mutual to have your arm broken?
A lot of lurid details, how he sometimes used to put a hood over her head so’s she couldn’t see and bring in other people to watch. Business associates, she thought. Leading lights in the world of vending machines, probably.
Henry says she was lucky because there was another case going on the same week up in Liverpool, a man had up for killing a child, and that pushed her out of the limelight a bit.
Of course, what Henry calls the wild and woolly feminist ladies were out in force even shouting from the gallery. ‘To a degree irresponsible,’ Henry said. ‘However mitigating the circumstances, Rosemary, she has to be looking at a custodial sentence.’ Then, when he only gave her two years, the judge gets it in the neck from the law and order brigade. But, as Sheila Blanchard said, ‘Worth every minute of it, dear, if you ask me. A couple of years basket weaving and you get the bed to yourself. Cheap at the price. I just wish I had a gun. As it is I’m pinning my hopes on his prostate.’
I can’t go and see her so often now she’s convicted and Henry doesn’t know I go at all. Well, I’ve never had a best friend, the sort you can tell everything to. Never had one, never been one, even when I was a girl. Not the type, I suppose. And no secrets to tell either. And with not having children I wasn’t a member of that club either.
She’s in Rissington, the other side of York. It’s one of these modern places, looks like a business park or an out of town shopping centre. Crimes ‘R’ Us. She’s transformed the prison garden, which used to be very utilitarian, cabbages, lettuces and whatnot.
Only now she’s got them to do some interplanting, even make it a bit of a potager…and while it’s never going to be Sissinghurst…the site’s too windy…it’s still streets ahead of what it was. She has visions of it being open to the public but that’s difficult with it being a prison. We go and sit on a seat in the garden and she’s started telling me about all the stuff he forced her to do. Said she wanted me to know in case it made me not want to see her any more. I said, ‘Don’t be silly.’ But terrible things I never knew people did. And with the hood over her head and men there, watching in silence. More than watching actually.
One of them who had a funny habit…and I knew what she was going to say the second before she said it…a funny habit of whistling under his breath.
Pause.
Of course, a lot of people do that.
FADE.
Kitchen.
‘I see they’re selling the Murder House,’ Sheila Blanchard calls out to me this morning. ‘The board’s gone up. Asking 160.’ I didn’t say I knew, or that actually it’s sold already. Fran says they’re an Asian family, quite well-to-do, have a chain of electrical shops. I thought, Well, that won’t do Marbella any good. Poor Henry. Golf with Jimmy Tarbuck takes a knock.
I look at him a lot now, this once upon a time spectator, or maybe still, who knows, somewhere. And I think…Well, sometimes I just think, ‘You dark horse.’ Other times I think about Fran and get upset. He caught me staring at him the other night, said ‘What are you looking at, young lady?’ I said, predictably, ‘Nothing.’ ‘You’ve been getting a bit broody lately,’ he said. And he patted me on the knee. (She pulls a face.)
What I’d actually been thinking was whether all these years he’d been wanting to see me crawl round the room naked on my hands and knees. No worse than bedding out, I suppose, though if I did it nowadays I’d have to have my knee pads on, which might take the edge off things a bit.
But I think about the collar and lead, then I think Well, that’s what my marriage has been like too, being jerked along. I mean, what else is Marbella?
We never settled on what to call it, that was part of the trouble. The garden’s made me quite used to things having a common name and a Latin one. Only with sex neither seemed to suit Henry. Coming from me, anyway. Just got embarrassed.
He’s no idea I go and see her. I tell him it’s the hospice. The farm goes from strength to strength; she’s put her onions in for shows and gone commercial with the tomatoes. She’s there every free moment, well, I say free. Except that when I say goodbye at the gate it feels it’s me that’s going back to prison.
Once a month they let her out for a half day and we go off for the afternoon and do all sorts. Open gardens, obviously, auctions we’ve been to, car boot sales. And old churches, which I’ve never cared much for, only Fran knows a lot about them. One church in the middle of a field near where there’d been a battle. And we sit there in a pew while she explains all the architectural features. And sometimes I think I’ve never been so happy in my life.
She took my arm this last time, just as we were coming down some steps at Fountains Abbey and then, when we got to the bottom, she didn’t let go. It was just like it was when I was a girl when a boy did it. Such a bold step. And so meant.
And I thought, here I am strolling arm in arm with someone who murdered her husband. I said…out loud… ‘I know what this is.’ She said, ‘What is it?’ I said, ‘It’s life.’
She wasn’t feeling all that clever today so we just went and sat in the grounds, and she held my hand again. Going into York next week for a check-up. I thought I could go along and hang about the hospital just on the off-chance I might see her but she’ll be with a warder apparently so I won’t.
Gave me this.
She has a large tomato which she puts to her cheek.
FADE.
A patio wall. A tropical night. Crickets, etc.
I’ve never had to start a garden from scratch before. There are no features at all. Flat, square, stony it’s like one of the ‘before’ pictures in the gardening magazines. Or an exercise yard.
A lawn’s pretty much out of the question in this heat and the water supply’s very quixotic, though Henry says the greens at the golf club are immaculate. And he saw Sean Connery last week. So I sit and look at it and draw plans. ‘Look on it as a challenge,’ Henry says. ‘You’ll crack it, young lady,’ he says. ‘I know you.’ (The dialogue is now quite broken up.)
She died, did Fran. A lot of toing and froing before they eventually tracked it down. No surprise to either of us. Doctors. It’s the first thing that occurs to you and the last thing that occurs to them. By which time it’s too late. ‘Oh, it was always too late, Mrs Horrocks.’
She was in a hospice at the finish so I knew the drill. I used to hold her hand, kiss it. And she’d kiss mine. We’d talked about a little garden centre.
Best thing that could have happened, Henry said. Which is when I should have packed my bags. Instead of which I just went and sat in the greenhouse for a bit. Typical.
He’ll sometimes wear one of these caps with the big peaks that boys wear. Reckons it’s for the sun. Caught him the other day wearing it back to front. I suppose it’s known as a new lease of life.
There are supposed to be lots of criminals round here. Bank robbers and such like who can’t go back, play golf all day.
Of course it’s just what would happen in a play. Fran shot him so she had to pay. Only this place is crawling with people who haven’t paid. Unless you count just being here as paying.
The gardening books talk about the plants that are supposed to like shade. They say they prefer it.
I don’t believe it. I don’t believe anything likes shade. They do perfectly well in the shade, it’s true. But give them even…(and there’s quite a long pause) give them a bit of sun and suddenly they come into their own.
I sit here at night, listening to the frogs and the crickets, and Henry, whistling under his breath.
FADE.
WAITING FOR THE TELEGRAM
Violet . Thora Hird
THE SPEAKER IS AN OLD LADY IN A WHEELCHAIR. SHE HAS A RUG OVER HER KNEES. THE BACKGROUND IS PLAIN AND UNCLUTTERED. SOMETIMES SHE IS PARKED BY A RADIATOR, SOMETIMES BY A WINDOW OR THE END OF A BED. THE SHOTS NEED NOT BE CONTINUOUS AS WRITTEN BUT CAN BE BROKEN UP BY A CUTAWAY OF VIOLET’S HANDS, TWISTING HER HANDKERCHIEF, TURNING HER WEDDING-RING OR JUST FOLDED IN HER LAP. SOMETIMES WHEN SHE IS TRYING TO REMEMBER THINGS OR EXPRESS THEM SHE FILLS UP WITH TEARS BUT THESE ARE ONLY BRIEF AND SHE GENERALLY BATTLES ON.
I saw this feller’s what-do-you-call-it today. Except I’m not supposed to say ‘what-do-you-call-it’. Verity says, ‘Violet. What-do-you-call-it is banned. When we cannot find the word we want we describe, we do not say ‘what-do-you-call-it’. Well, you won’t catch me describing that. Besides, ‘what-do-you-call-it’ is what I call it. Somebody’s what-do-you-call-it. Anyway I saw it.
I didn’t think anything about it only somebody must have gone and alerted the office because next thing you know Bouncing Betty poles in. She says, ‘Violet, I have to ask you this. Was the penis erect?’ I said, ‘Nurse Bapty. That’s not a word I would use.’ She said, ‘Erect?’ I said, ‘No. The other.’ She said, ‘Well, Violet. You’ve had what we call a stroke. You’re sometimes funny with words.’ I said, ‘I’m not funny with that word.’ She said, ‘Things have changed now, Violet. Penis is its name. All the other names are just trying to make it more acceptable. Language is a weapon, Violet. We’re at war.’ I said, ‘Who with?’ She said, ‘Men.’
He was a smartish feller, can’t have been more than seventy and a lovely blue suit. He could have been a bank manager except he had no socks on. I said, ‘You can put that away.’ He said, ‘I’ve got a big detached house in Harrogate.’ I said, ‘That’s no excuse.’ He said, ‘It’s got five bathrooms.’
She turns her wheelchair.
They’ve inaugurated this what-do-you-call (She checks herself) …this chair-lift thing. I think he must have come up from downstairs. There’s been one or two of them trying to migrate. They get bored. Do you wonder? Anyway when he saw it wasn’t cutting much ice with me he takes it over to Hilda, only she’s busy braying on her tray with her spoon so it doesn’t make much of an impact there either. Mary’s asleep and when he wakes her up and says, ‘Look at this’, she says, ‘Is it dinnertime?’ and goes back to sleep again.
In the finish he comes back to me and says, ‘I’ve forgotten, did I show you this?’ At which point Rene rushes in, sees his lordship with his trousers down and says, ‘Are you my taxi? I’m all ready.’
I said to Francis, ‘And they call it a rest home.’
FADE.
They haven’t given it up. We were throwing this ball about… a big, felty thing…I could never catch a ball when I was little so I know I can’t do it now. Anyway Nurse Bapty comes in and wheels me to the window and says, ‘Violet, having seen this penis, would you like some counselling?’ I said, ‘Nurse. I’m nearly 95.’ She said, ‘Yes, Violet, but you’re a victim and choose how old you are, you’re still flying the flag of gender.’ I said, ‘Well I think a cup of tea would do the trick, Nurse Bapty, thank you.’ I call them all Nurse and she is a nurse only a lot of them aren’t, they’re just young lasses.
Francis is a proper nurse, though, he’s got letters after his name and you can tell because he has me out of my clothes in no time. I said, ‘Somebody tried to undress me once, only he wasn’t a patch on you. Are you as sharp as this with your girl friend?’ He said, ‘You’re my girl friend.’
He has some grand arms.
FADE.
I can’t reckon up names. New lass on this afternoon, bonny little thing, helping Francis put me to bed for my lie down. I said, ‘What’s your name, love?’ She says, ‘Devon.’ I says, ‘That’s never a name, it’s a place.’ She says, ‘Yes, a very beautiful place. My mam and dad used to go on holiday there.’
I said, ‘Well, it’s a good job they didn’t go to Skegness.’
She looks right mad, only Francis laughs so she laughs an’ all. I think she’s got her eye on him.
I drop off and when I wake up there’s a fellow by my bed. He goes, ‘Hello!’ I said, ‘Hello’ and shut my eyes again. They send these folks round to test you.
When I open them again he’s still there. ‘Hello!,’ he goes. Fattish feller, sixty odd, gingery tash. He said, ‘It’s Donald, mother. I’m your son.’
He didn’t look like a son, looked more like a father. Big wristwatch, attaché case, one of these green raincoaty-things they shoot in. Anyway I take no notice and he starts on the Hello! game again. Hello! Hello! Made me feel like a budgie. I said, ‘Bugger off.’
Mrs…Mrs…light-coloured lady…Shah comes in, starts squeegeeing round. He says, ‘It’s tragic, isn’t it. She’d never had a day’s illness in her life. I think it’s a disease of civilisation. Does it happen in your country?’ She says, ‘I’m from Huddersfield.’
Then Rene comes in, ready for off as usual. She says, ‘Are you my taxi? I’ve been waiting all morning.’ ‘I’ve just remembered,’ he says, ‘I’m wanted in Wakefield,’ shoves his tash in my face and he’s off. Mrs Shah says, ‘Was that your son?’ I said, ‘He thinks so.’ She says, ‘My son’s got in to do engineering. He’s six foot two.’
I lay there working it out. If I had a son I must have had a…husband. So when Francis was wiping my bottom later on I said, ‘Did I get married?’ He said, ‘Yes, can’t you remember?’ I said, ‘I remember one young man but I don’t think I took the plunge. Are you married?’ He said, ‘You get star treatment here, Violet. Even the Queen doesn’t get her bottom wiped.’
FADE.
What’s her name came round today…her that helps me with talking…(She thinks)…name of a cricket bat, else a gas oven… Verity. She’s a nice-looking lass but makes nowt of herself, a big jumper thing…I said, I bet you’ve got a right nice…’ She goes, ‘Describe, Violet, describe…’ I said, ‘A right nice…them two things with pink ends that men like…Bust.’
By, she did look narked! She said, ‘Things are different now, Violet. Women have control of their own bodies.’ I said, ‘Is that why I can’t get them to take me to the toilet?’
Then we start doing these exercises, naming folks. I’m quite good at that…Rene, Mary, Hilda. And then I get stuck. She says, ‘Describe, Violet. Say, the lady in the yellow frock.’ I said, ‘The black lady.’ She said, ‘No, Violet. It’s better to say the lady in the yellow frock.’
I says to Francis, ‘It’s a complicated business talking. I never used to give it a thought.’ He said, ‘What?’
He wasn’t listening. He was miles away. Really quiet. Not like him. He’s generally so full of…them things you get in tins…beans!
He’s a lovely looking lad.
FADE.
Rene gollops her food. She was sick today all down Francis’s front. I said, ‘You gollop your food, you.’ She said, ‘Well, I have to. I’ve got a taxi coming.’ I said, ‘Rene, where’s this taxi taking you?’ She said, ‘Armley.’ I said, ‘Armley where?’ She said, ‘My mam and dad’s in 1947.’ I said, ‘Well, if he can take you there I bet he does a spanking trade.’
Anyway she fetches her dinner back all down Francis. So he says, ‘You’ll have to excuse me, ladies’ and he takes his…tunicky thing…right off. And by, he’s a grand-looking lad! Not a mark on him and right big (She mimes shoulders)…here. It made you want to…(She mimes a kiss)…do that, whatever it’s called. Lovely. Devon came in I saw her having a look.
