I’ve called the doctor when I’m sick?’ Her voice came plaintive, and she frowned, thinking: Well, if I’m going to strike that note, then … He had already weakened into a smile and sat down by the bed. ‘While I’m here I’ll give you the gen about The Watchdog round. I’ve been doing it for you with Murdoch and Bill.’ He gave her a report, an almost house-by-house report, and she lay watching the so deeply serious face, silent until he said: ‘We’ve fixed Ronald. He’s OK. There’s nothing for you to worry about.’
‘Ronald? The man dying of …’ She stopped herself.
‘Dying? He’s not dying. Let me tell you, comrade, what he needs is some good food and rest. There’s no such thing as TB.’
‘Well, what have you done?’
‘We took a collection among the lads and we’ve fed him up. We’ve given him a good feed and paid his rent. These sicknesses are just poverty. That’s all, poverty. You wouldn’t know, with your class background, but believe you me, when the doctors talk about TB and cancer and all that caper, they’re just helping the capitalists. They’d be out of work without poverty.’
Martha’s head ached. She said: ‘Jimmy, for all that, he’s so sick he should be in hospital.’
‘Sick? Of course he’s sick. He’ll be better in a week, with us lads looking after him. And now there’s you. How long have you been in bed?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why doesn’t that old woman look after you?’
‘Oh, she’s too busy being neurotic about the natives.’
‘What do you mean neurotic? What’s that kind of talk?’
‘If you like it better, she’s got the African problem on her mind.’
‘You’re full of bourgeois talk, comrade, do you know that?’
She said flippantly: ‘I’m middle-class to the backbone,’ and thought: Now he’ll lose his temper, and then laugh.
But his deep-socketed eyes were too indignant for anger.
‘If you weren’t sick, I’d have it out with you, I would straight. Look at you, comrade, lying here alone in bed with lipstick on. What sort of caper is that?’
‘I’m not alone,’ she said, ‘you’re here.’ And grinned at him. But he went dark red and said: ‘There you are. Listen. Believe you me, there’s a lot of rottenness in you you’ve got to lose before you’re a good comrade.’
‘Oh God,’ said Martha, suddenly angry, ‘you’re such a bloody prig.’
‘And your language. I don’t like to hear girls using that kind of language.’
Martha, prickling all over with exasperation, moved angrily about in her bed. Quite unconsciously he reached out his large hand to adjust the covers, as if he were saying: ‘Be still.’
‘You bourgeois girls, you need a wood working-class husband to teach you a thing or two. When I see you bourgeois girls I think of my mother and what she had to take from her life, and believe you me you could learn a thing or two from her.’
‘All of you,’ she said, ‘all of you working-class men have this damned sentimental thing about your mothers.’
‘Sentimental, is it? Let me tell you, it’s the working-class woman that takes the rap every time.’
‘I imagined that was why we wanted to change things.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said hotly. He was leaning forward, sweat-covered, scarlet-faced. She was sitting up, clutching the blankets to her, her face running with sweat.
She said, in a change of mood, grimly: ‘We’ll abolish poverty, and give women freedom and then they’ll simmer and boil, sacrificing themselves for everyone – like my mother.’ She laughed at the look of bewildered anger on his face. ‘There’s no good your talking to me about women sacrificing themselves for their families – I’ve had that one. And I don’t want to talk about it either,’ she added, as the explosion of his emotion reached his eyes in a hot stare of protest.
‘What do you mean, you don’t want to talk about it? I’m going to talk you out of this one, believe you me. Women are the salt of the earth. I’m telling you. My mother was the salt of the earth. My dad died when I was ten and she brought up me and my two sisters on what she got by cleaning offices until I went to work and helped her out.’
‘Good, then let’s arrange things so that women have to work eighteen hours a day and die at fifty, worn out so that you can go on being sentimental about us.’
She collapsed back, shaking with weakness.
He said: ‘I don’t know what you’re saying, comrade, and that’s a fact.’ He stretched out his hand again to pull the sheet up to her neck. ‘And you should be keeping still. I keep telling you, keep still. When my mum was ill once I nursed her three months day and night – you should lie still and let nature take its way. The doctors couldn’t do anything for my mum, but I could. They gave her this and they gave her that, but I kept her in bed warm and still for three months. It was the rest she needed and the rest she got, with me helping her. You should let the powers of nature flow through you, comrade. It’s a fact.’
‘That may be so, but the doctor’s coming now – I can hear him.’
She could hear Dr Stern and Anton talking in the passage. Jimmy got up, saying: ‘Then I’ll make my way outside and wait until he’s gone.’ He went out through the doors on to the veranda. She could see his big patient shape through the curtains against the red of the setting sun.
Good Lord, she thought, he’s taken me over. He’s responsible for me. And through the wall on the other side Anton was talking her over with Dr Stern. An old feeling of being hemmed in and disposed of prickled through her. I hate it all, she thought wildly, not knowing what she hated or why she was imprisoned. I wish to God everyone would leave me alone. She had a nightmare feeling of sliding helpless into danger.
When Dr Stern came in, bland and weary as always, she rememebered she had not seen him since she left her husband, and sat up, thinking: He’ll disapprove of me and show it, and I’ll pretend not to see it. Besides, there’s the bill. I’d forgotten – I simply can’t afford to be sick.
But his eyes were professional. ‘Well, Mrs Knowell,’ he asked, as she heard him so often: ‘And what can I do you for?’
She laughed obediently at the joke and lay down as he held her wrist.
‘You should have called me in before,’ he remarked. ‘Who’s looking after you?’
‘My landlady.’
‘I think we’ll find a bed for you in hospital.’
‘Oh, no.’ Martha sat up again, in an impulse to escape the whole situation. Dr Stern held her by the shoulder and said: ‘If it’s a question of paying, then don’t worry. There are times when people can pay and times when they can’t. You’re an old patient of mine, aren’t you?’
Martha’s eyes filled with tears and she turned away to hide them. But her voice shook as she thanked him.
‘Yes, Mrs Knowell, and you’ve been here all these days with a high temperature letting things ride – and you’re a sensible girl, so I’ve always thought.’
‘Perhaps I’m not sensible,’ she muttered. ‘Dr Stern, I really don’t want to go to hospital.’
‘And who will nurse you?’
‘I have friends.’ She thought: If he understands this then he’s a real doctor and not just a medicine man. He let his eyes rest on her face for some time: her lips were trembling. At last he nodded and said; ‘Mrs Knowell, there are times when we all find life too much for us.’
Oh