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Waiting room

Andrew Kingston

    ‘Ok Maurice. Pick you up at five. Same place as usual.’
    I wait until Mr Swan pulls off and his car hums into the traffic and the red-bruised horizon.
    I don’t want Mr Swan to see what I do next. It’s not a particularly bad thing, it’s just not what he’d expect. I don’t want to upset him. He and Mrs Swan are good to me. Without the Swans, I’d be lost.
    I told Mr Swan I was meeting Eric, my eldest. I usually tell Mr Swan I’m meeting Eric, though sometimes, I tell him I’m meeting Sean.
    Last time I saw Eric, things didn’t work out. He was trouble as a boy. Valerie used to tell me I was too soft: that I should’ve taken him to task when he started taking money from our bedside, then started smoking, then drinking. Then he would have never got out of control and accessed those parts of his brain – as his head doctor called it – which persuaded him to do all that bad stuff.
    We got the best help and eventually, Eric calmed down enough to take up a useful position in society. But he never really recovered.

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    Sean? I made Sean up. Irish spelling and all. I get bored. I don’t have Valerie to amuse me anymore, or to keep me on the straight and narrow. So of course I’m going to make stuff up.

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    I don’t want Mr Swan to know I take myself to the doctors. Like I said, Mr and Mrs Swan are good to me. But this going to the doctors on my own is just about all I can do to give myself a feeling of still trying to be independent, even if it’s only in some very small way.
    The surgery entrance looks kind of the same as ever, only a shabby version of what it used to be. They’ve taken the brass plaque down. About time they cleaned the place up. The paint’s cracking and plaster’s chipped, especially round the base and capital of the Doric columns.
    The panelled, black gloss door used to shine. It had always been heavy, but it used to purr on its hinges rather than scrape the flagstone. The brass fittings are mottled. Meadow grass and dandelions grow between the paving stones, and in the cracks in the concrete.

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    Just so you know: I mention the ‘base’ and ‘capital’ of the Doric column. The ‘capital’ is on the top of the column, and is usually made up of necking, volute and abacus. Just so you know.

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    ‘My name’s Bartleby,’ I say at the reception window. Same secretaries as last week, only they don’t even look like they’re working today. Or not putting much effort in, at any rate.
    ‘OK, Mr Bartleby.’
    ‘I have an appointment at ten.’
    ‘Take a seat.’
    ‘Will I actually be seen today?’
    ‘Please. Take a seat.’

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    Bartleby. Giving a false name is a good idea. I got it – the name, not the idea – from a short story I read about a fellow who committed no crime, other than to not do what was expected of him, and who ended up in prison, on hunger strike. The story confused me, but then lots of things confuse me. A year or so ago, for example, everyone stopped going out. Schools, workplaces, shopping centres and airports. All shut. Everything shut. Mr and Mrs Swan started wearing masks and telling me there was a pandemic.
    Pandemic. A new word. Or at least one that didn’t get out much, until a few years ago, when it decided what-the-hell and went for it anyway. ‘Pandemic’ was everywhere.

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    Bartleby, as far as I remember, just stopped doing his job. He withdrew his labour. Same as the pandemic - people just stopped what they were doing. Mr and Mrs Swan brought me meals and telephone calls, but I wasn’t allowed out, or to have any guests. The Swans said they were ‘doing their rounds.’ Making sure all the residents were being looked after.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Mr Swan would say. ‘We had to tell Eric he couldn’t visit. We can’t allow visits. We would if we could. I asked him to tell Sean, as well.’ Mr Swan was very apologetic. I felt sorry for him. He told Jeannie-next-door and the rest of them the same thing, I guess. It must have been tiring.
    If Eric did want to see me, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see him. Last time I saw Eric, things didn’t pan out.

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    Sean? Like I already said: I made Sean up. If Swan told Eric to ‘tell Sean’; for some reason this tickled me.

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    In the story, when Bartleby shut and withdrew his labour, he said ‘I would prefer not to.’ He said it a few times. No-one had a preference or a choice with the pandemic. Mr and Mrs Swan kept me away from the news, but Jeannie-next-door had a radio and seeing as how she’s deaf as a post, she had it on full blast. Jeannie-next-door loves the oldies, but even the oldies stations have news now and again. Sometimes, I hear newscasters sobbing. The tragedy of it. This ‘pandemic.’ Dozens and hundreds and thousands dead.

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    Jeannie-next-door’s oldies station plays sunshine songs by bands I remember from when I was a child. The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Searchers. I used to enjoy this music until Eric flipped and destroyed my old record collection. He was having what Dr Bannister later called an ‘extraordinary episode.’ This particular extraordinary episode involved Eric barricading me in the kitchen; putting my whole record collection out on the patio, dousing it in petrol and setting fire to it.
    We got complaints.

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    On my way up to the surgery, I overheard a couple of people talking about a war. I’ve heard nothing about this on Jeannie-next-door’s radio, but I will ask Mr Swan. Or maybe Mrs Swan. The Swans’ job is to look after us, which seems to involve a good deal of not letting us know what’s going on. What’s really happening. Sometimes, though, I ask. I can usually tell, from the way they react, if they’re on the level.
    If you ask me? The planet has seen out a pandemic. Why at such massive cost and expense, would countries start bombing each other?

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    ‘Mr Bartleby?’
    My name. My borrowed name; from the short story I read, years ago, crackles through the intercom. Faint and scratchy.
    The receptionists had been whispering and looking out at me. They tried not to make it obvious. One of them said ‘why does he think he’s going to see a doctor for Christ’s sakes?’ Something along those lines. The way she said it. Must have thought I’m deaf as a bloody door post.
    I get up and walk to the window. Receptionists aside, it’s quiet. Same as last week. I can’t think why I’m not getting seen. Last week, I was told I missed my slot, but that if I waited, perhaps another would come along.
    Today, the receptionists look less friendly. As I get to the window, the younger one – the one who’d asked why I thought I’d be able to see a doctor – asks me to confirm my address.
    ‘Flint Court, down the bottom of Park Street,’ I blurt out before I have the chance to make up an address.

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    It’s a strange story, Bartleby. He stops working and stops doing things and acts weird and ends up going to prison. I won’t tell you the end. You’ll have to read it yourself.

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    ‘Why are you here, Mr Bartleby?’
    ‘I had a call, confirming my rescheduled appointment.’
    ‘What rescheduled appointment?’
    ‘With Doctor Bannister.’
    ‘Sorry. Who?’
    ‘Bannister. B-A-double N-I-S-T-E-R.’
    Dr Bannister has been my doctor since we moved to the area. I was a teenager then, so it would have been at least sixty years ago. Dr Bannister was getting on, even back then, or so it seemed. When you’re young, people are never as old as you think. Still, I dread to think how old Dr Bannister is now. Back when I was a teenager, I was healthy enough. A little confused, perhaps. Not as confused as my Pa before me. Not as confused as Eric, afterwards, or Eric now, for that matter. I used to be taken to Dr Bannister for ‘growing pains,’ same as I used to tell Eric.
    I sit back down. The receptionists seem even more confused. I wish they were a little sharper. But they told me they’d get to the bottom of it, and that I was to ‘wait and just try to be a little patient.’
    ‘Little patient! That’s a good one!’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I can help,’ I said. ‘I’m neither going to get any bigger or any smaller while I’m sat waiting!’

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    At last, signs of life. The telephone rings. The receptionists are clearly old hands; they let the phone ring for a while, even though we can all three of us hear it, and they don’t seem busy.
    Finally, the phone’s picked up. ‘Hello? Mary Seacole Housing Association?’
    No wonder they get so bloody confused, I think to myself, if a housing association is sharing an office with a doctor’s. I can’t hear what the receptionist is saying, but that’s fine. Nothing to do with me. Why would it be? It’s the older receptionist on the phone. She looks the kind who gives kids lollipops when their appointments are over. The younger receptionist is staring at me. She looks less confused than earlier. Maybe I’ll get to see Dr Bannister after all. It’s been so long. I’m starting to feel tired.

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    Time ticks on some more. I hear people come in. It seems to me that, since I arrived, I haven’t heard, haven’t encountered, haven’t seen anyone apart from the receptionists.
    The door scrapes on the flagstone. The people coming in seem in good spirits, clomping down the hallway. Their talk is muffled, but clear enough for me to realise they’re not speaking English. I don’t see them, except the one who walks into the receptionists’ office. He nods and smiles at the older receptionist and puts his arms, from behind, round the younger, as she’s still sat down. He says something to her. She says something back. They talk in either Polish or Czech or Serbo-Croat. They both look at me. The man smiles again. He’s a smiley man, wearing a high-viz jacket.
    I smile back.
    ‘We’ll get you sorted out with Dr Bannister,’ the man in the high-viz jacket says.

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    It’s getting dark. I tell myself I’m not going to see Dr Bannister, despite what the man in the high-viz jacket said. The older receptionist goes home and I can smell cooking.
    I hear the door again. It’s gone a quarter-to-five. Time to leave if I’m going to get back to where Mr Swan picks me up.
    When she stands up, I see that the younger receptionist has her coat on. She looks at the door to her office, to where the newcomer’s just come in. Then over, to me. And back again.
    They may be murmuring, but I recognise the voice. Mr Swan.
    When he walks into the waiting room, Mr Swan looks neither angry, nor upset.
    ‘Come on,’ he says. He turns round and smiles at the receptionist. Suddenly, she’s all light and sunshine.
    ‘Thanks again for the call,’ he says to her. Then he looks back at me. ‘The second mystery of the day solved. His son, Eric called earlier, trying to find him.’
    He helps me out of the chair. It’s good to stand up, after all that sitting around waiting.
    ‘Come on,’ he says to me. I can’t understand why he’s so calm. He hands me my coat.

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