A Temporary Life

‘It may be the sound of a lot of old hens to you, but to me,’ she says, ‘it’s like the music of the stars.’

The room is panelled to almost shoulder height; above that the walls are hung with armorial shields. Gnarled wooden beams project from the ceiling overhead. Each one of the surrounding tables is occupied by women. There’s not another man in the room as far as I can tell.

Something in Yvonne’s appearance has attracted their attention; that, it seems, and the loudness of her voice.

I watch her now; she eats her food like she smokes her cigarettes, unaware, uncaring.

‘It’s lovely chicken.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘We don’t get food, you know, like this.’

‘I thought you liked the food in there.’

‘It’s all right,’ she says, ‘for what it is.’

It’s like a game; a certain eccentricity, it seems, is demanded of her: she presents it, at times, as if to reassure herself, and me: ‘If I act like this I must be mad.’

‘It was good of them to let you out.’

‘I haven’t been out for about three weeks.’

She eats quickly, as if she suspected that the food, if she doesn’t instantly consume it, will be taken away.

‘I’ve had these terrible headaches the last two weeks.’

‘You never mentioned it,’ I tell her.

‘They give you these pills. I don’t like taking them,’ she says. ‘If you grow to rely on them,’ she adds, ‘what are you in the end?’

‘If you don’t take them you have the headache, so why not take them and get rid of it?’ I tell her.

‘There was a woman broke out the other night. They lock the doors, you know, at eight.’

The women at the adjoining tables lift their heads.

‘She smashed a window. They found her, four hours later, walking round the town.’

‘They always bring you back,’ I say.

‘Suppose you got hidden, though?’ she asks.

‘And where would you hide that they couldn’t find you in the end?’

‘I could go to my mother’s.’

‘That’d be one of the first places they’d go and look,’ I tell her.

‘In any case, I’m better off,’ she says, ‘in there.’ She shakes her head. ‘I realize that. The longer I can stick it, the sooner I’ll be out.’

I can see another man’s head across the room; small, red-cheeked, fair-haired, the face relieved by a light-moustache. It gazes round: a hand is raised, a small, portly figure comes across, arms swinging out on either side.

‘Hello, old man. Fancy finding you in here.’

Pollard bows slightly, then glances at Yvonne.

A woman at Pollard’s side, with glaring eyes and a red beret-shaped hat, is glancing disapprovingly round the room for an empty chair.

‘There’s nowhere else to sit. They sent us here.’ Pollard adds this with another bow. ‘I suppose they thought you’d finished then.’

‘This is my wife Yvonne,’ I say.

‘My dear, this is Mr Freestone, who teaches at the college,’ Pollard says. ‘My wife, Mrs Freestone: Mrs Freestone, my wife.’

‘This is Mr and Mrs Pollard,’ I tell Yvonne.

She doesn’t look up; in fact she appears to assume that the Pollards have something to do with the restaurant itself: the pace of her eating has suddenly quickened.

I get up from the table, draw out a chair: after glancing at Pollard himself, his wife sits down.

‘This is very decent of you,’ Pollard says.

‘No children with you, then?’ I look around.

‘Skipped off to Jenny’s mother.’ He gestures at his wife.

‘We thought we’d eat in town,’ his wife has said.

‘Make a day of it.’ He looks around.

‘Are you two from the home, then?’ Yvonne has said.

‘Home?’ Mrs Pollard says. She looks across.

‘From the hospital,’ Yvonne has said.

‘We’ve come from home,’ Mrs Pollard says.

‘Make a day of it. Why cook a dinner?’ Pollard says.

‘It’s the first week-end they’ve let me out,’ Yvonne has said.

‘For the past few weeks, that is,’ I say.

‘Once they get you in they’ll not often let you out,’ she says.

‘What hospital is that, then?’ Pollard says.

‘Westfield.’

‘Isn’t that …?’ he says. He shakes his head.

‘It’s for lunatics,’ Yvonne has said.

The waitress comes across.

Pollard picks up the menu; having opened it, he hands it to his wife.

‘A la carte or fixed luncheon?’ the waitress says.

‘I liked the chicken,’ Yvonne has said.

‘That’s nice,’ the waitress says. She smiles.

‘I could eat another one, I think!’

‘Two for the price of one.’ The waitress laughs.

‘You don’t know what it’s like to eat good food.’

‘We try and do our best,’ the waitress says.

‘Where I come from they get it out of tins.’

‘Still, some good food, I suppose, you get from tins.’

‘It’s mainly for dogs and cats. Once they’ve cooked it, you know, it’s hard to tell.’

‘All the food in here, of course, is fresh.’

‘What have you got for pudding?’ Yvonne has said.

Mrs Pollard chooses from the menu: the waitress writes it down. Pollard examines the menu for a while himself: he consults the waitress.

‘There’s a sultana pudding, or various ice creams,’ the waitress says. ‘The fresh fruit, of course, is very nice.’

‘Is it out of tins?’ Yvonne has said.

‘Fresh out of tins. That’s right,’ she says.

‘I’ll have sultana pudding,’ Yvonne has said.

Pollard, returning to the menu, dictates his choice.

‘And you?’ the waitress says.

‘I’ll have the sultana pudding, too,’ I add.

‘Two sultana puddings,’ the waitress says.

‘And coffee.’

‘I’ll have tea,’ Yvonne has said.

‘One tea, one coffee,’ the waitress says.

She glances at the Pollards, glances at Yvonne, then goes off, briskly, across the room.

‘We left it a bit late, thinking it wouldn’t be so crowded,’ Mrs Pollard says.

‘Saturday,’ Pollard says, ‘we might have known.’

‘Backed any horses today?’ I ask.

Pollard ducks his head; it’s as if, briefly, I’ve trodden on his toes.

‘Nothing of any note,’ he says.

‘Are you backing horses still?’ his wife has said.

‘Nothing above a pound,’ I tell her.

‘A pound.’

‘That’s Freestone. He’s got no kids. With me, it’s never above a shilling,’ Pollard says.

‘Wilcox insists, you see,’ I tell her.

‘Insists?’

Yvonne, her empty plate before her, gazes fixedly at Mrs Pollard’s hat.

‘It’s a sort of gesture of faith, you see, amongst the staff.’

‘Community feeling,’ Pollard says. ‘He’s the same about smoking, of course,’ he adds.

‘Where I am, there’s a woman taking drugs,’ Yvonne has said. ‘She broke up the kitchen the other night.’

The heads at the surrounding tables turn.

‘All the plates. The cups. You could hear them from the ward. By the time the nurse got there there was nothing left.’

‘How long have you been in Westfield?’ Pollard says. He phrases it politely, as if it’s an hotel of world renown.

‘Months, it seems,’ Yvonne has said.

‘Seven weeks, I would have thought,’ I tell her.

‘Months, it seems to me,’ Yvonne has said.

She shakes her head.

‘There’s a woman there who cut her wrists. She follows you about and tells you things.’

Her face, with the Pollards’ arrival, has grown quite calm.

‘What sort of things, then?’ Pollard says.

‘About her family.’

Pollard, having asked the question, looks over at his wife.

‘How they get on to her,’ she adds. ‘Her husband tried to kill her once, she says.’

‘I suppose some of it’s exaggerated,’ Pollard says.

‘They don’t need to exaggerate anything in there,’ Yvonne has said.

The waitress reappears; she takes away the empty plates and sets down the two sultana puddings.

‘You go ahead. Don’t wait for us, then,’ Pollard says.

Yvonne, however, has already started.

‘One tea one coffee,’ the waitress says.

She sets the cups down beside the plates.

‘One thing you can say about the service here.’

‘It’s prompt.’

Mrs Pollard, having loosened her coat, removes her hat.

‘It’s the only place you can get a meal. That’s decently edible. In town, I mean.’

‘Some of the food we have you wouldn’t touch.’ Her spoon raised to her mouth, Yvonne looks up. ‘It’s often cold before you start. And some of it they serve up,’ she adds, ‘from the day before.’

‘What job did you have, before you went to Westfield?’ Pollard says.

‘Job?’

‘Work. Did you have any work?’ He looks at me.

‘I used to teach. I was a teacher for a while,’ she says.

‘I suppose you’ll go back to it,’ he says.

She shakes her head.

‘I don’t think I shall,’ she says. ‘It drives you mad.’

‘I get the same feeling too, at times, Mrs Freestone,’ Pollard says.

He laughs.

‘There’s another woman there who screams all night. It took seven nurses once to hold her down. I never thought the human body could have such strength.’

The heads at the surrounding tables turn again.

‘It may sound like a lot of old hens to you, but to me it’s the music of the stars,’ she says.

We finish the meal. I get the bill.

As we get up to leave Yvonne moves over to an adjoining table.

‘Have you enjoyed the meal?’ she says.

The heads, after an inquiring look, are lowered.

‘I’ve enjoyed mine,’ she says. ‘The best, in fact, I’ve had for years.’

She fastens her coat.

‘See you on Monday,’ Pollard says.

He gets up from the table as Yvonne comes back.

‘I hope we’ll see you soon,’ he adds.

‘I shan’t be in much longer, I suppose,’ she says.

They watch us to the door.

‘Did you enjoy the meal?’ I ask her when we get outside.

‘The best I’ve ever had,’ she says.

‘It’s time we were getting back,’ I say.

‘Couldn’t we go for a walk?’ she says. ‘I need some cigarettes in any case, you see.’

As we approach the shop, however, she says, ‘I don’t like shops. I shan’t come in.’

She stands looking at the window as I go inside.

When I come out a few minutes later she’s disappeared.

I look for her figure along the street.

I walk back for a while the way we’ve come: the restaurant in sight, I turn towards the shop. I examine the shop windows the opposite side; I gaze, from the kerbstone, at the figures moving along the road itself. I walk on, in the direction we were going before she disappeared.

I see her, some distance away, briefly, beyond a frieze of heads. She’s standing by a shop, almost as I left her, gazing at the window.

When I take her arm she scarcely stirs.

‘Why did you wander off? I thought you’d stay by the shop,’ I say.

‘I haven’t wandered off.’ She shakes her head.

‘You’re miles,’ I tell her, ‘from where you were.’

‘Shall we go somewhere else?’ she says.

An alleyway, opening from the street, takes us through to the cathedral close. The porch is empty, the doors unlocked.

We go inside. A beam of reddish light crosses the nave diagonally, from left to right.

Workmen are ascending in a lift at the opposite end; men in white overalls, with helmets that glisten in the light.

Their voices echo, faintly, from scaffolding above our heads.

I hold her hand; we sit in the shadows at the back of the nave: a single figure, kneeling, its head in its hands, is visible in one of the pews of a chapel to our right.

‘Do you think I’ll ever get out?’ she says. ‘I feel, at times, I’m getting worse.’

Her hand holds mine like it might a piece of wood; there’s no engagement of any sort: a kind of anguish, almost communal, that cancels individual feeling out.

‘I met a woman the other day. She said she’d been inside for twenty years.’

‘You’re only in the admission wing,’ I tell her. ‘The average turn-over there’s six weeks.’

‘I’ve been there longer than that,’ she says.

‘So there’s no need to worry. It can’t be long.’

There’s the faint whirring of an electric motor: a white-clad figure descends from the shadows above. There’s the faint tapping of a hammer above our heads.

‘I feel I’ll never be free again.’

‘If you feel as much as that you must be well.’

Her hand squeezes mine with a strange, irregular rhythm.

‘I saw your mother the other day. She sends you all her love,’ I say.

‘It must be hard. For her. To see me as I am,’ she says.

‘She just wants you out, that’s all,’ I tell her.

‘It’s what we all want, but it doesn’t get any nearer, love,’ she says.

She begins to weep.

I rest her head against my arm.

The head in the pew to our right has turned: a face looks up from the outstretched hands.

‘Those people that we met today.’

‘Why should you mind about them?’ I say.

‘I saw the way they looked. I can’t help myself at times,’ she says.

‘I was proud to be with you at that lunch today.’ I stroke her hair.

‘I can’t communicate the things I feel.’

‘I feel them, too.’

‘There seems no point.’

‘There isn’t any point. That’s why we’re here.’

A second figure, a light glistening from his helmet, descends in the lift from the shadows above. There’s the sound, somewhere, of an electric drill.

I feel the dampness of her tears against my hand; her grief’s been with her all her life: it reminds me of her home, her house, the disintegration that goes on against her will: she’s like a plant, harried by its own decay: the bloom itself is a kind of death.

‘You seem so calm.’

‘I always am.’

‘You always were.’

‘With you I’m calm. I don’t think,’ I say, ‘with anyone else.’

‘I don’t like this church.’

‘We can go outside.’

‘It’s time to go back, I suppose,’ she says.

Three figures, their white overalls glowing in the light, ascend slowly to the blackness overhead.

She glances up.

She sees, for the first time perhaps, the scaffolding above our heads.

‘The ceiling’s being repaired.’

‘It stands for nothing, I suppose,’ she says.

She waves her hand.

‘It’s so cold in here.’

The figure from the chapel to our right walks past; at the door, to our left, it kneels, crosses itself, then passes through to the porch outside.

She wipes her eyes.

‘How are you managing on your own?’ she says.

‘I’m a great one for living on my own,’ I say.

‘I suppose you’re seeing lots of girls.’

‘One almost every night,’ I say.

‘Are any like me? I suppose they’re better, on the whole,’ she says.

Yet the inquiry, it seems, is directed at some other person.

‘Could we go back on the bus?’ she says.

‘Don’t you want to walk?’

‘I’m feeling tired. I’ll be glad to get back. I usually sleep in the afternoons,’ she says.