Is There Anything You Want? Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Margaret Forster

  Dedication

  Title page

  Epigraph

  Part I

  1. The Clinic

  2. 174517

  3. Is There Anything You Want?

  4. We’re Always Here, Dear

  5. A Garden is a Lovesome Thing . . .

  Part II

  6. Mysterious Ways

  7. Think about Your Life

  8. Soaring

  9. On the Bench

  10. Pull Yourself Together

  11. Last Will and Testament

  12. Happiness is Activity

  13. Awaiting Events

  14. The Clinic

  Copyright

  About the Book

  What do Mrs H., Rachel, Edwina, Ida, Sarah, Dot and Chrissie have in common? They’re all women, but they’re fat, thin, old, young, married or single – and appear as diverse as human nature can be. But they are all survivors. This enthralling novel follows the ripples that go out into ordinary lives which have been changed by a shared experience, all connected by the same hospital clinic in a small Northern town. This is a novel about what it means to live in the shadow of disease, and with scars, whether mental and physical. From the marvellous ambivalence of the title question, it leaves us with a great deal more to consider about life and its infinite variety.

  About the Author

  Born in Carlisle and educated there and at Oxford, Margaret Forster is the author of many successful novels, including The Memory Box, Have the Men Had Enough?, Lady’s Maid and, most recently, Diary of an Ordinary Woman. She has also written bestselling memoirs (Hidden Lives and Precious Lives) and biographies, including Daphne du Maurier and Good Wives?. She lives in north London and the Lake District.

  ALSO BY MARGARET FORSTER

  Fiction

  Dame’s Delight

  Georgy Girl

  The Bogeyman

  The Travels of Maudie Tipstaff

  The Park

  Miss Owen-Owen is At Home

  Fenella Phizackerley

  Mr Bone’s Retreat

  The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

  Mother Can You Hear Me?

  The Bride of Lowther Fell

  Marital Rites

  Private Papers

  Have the Men Had Enough?

  Lady’s Maid

  The Battle for Christabel

  Mothers’ Boys

  Shadow Baby

  The Memory Box

  Diary of an Ordinary Woman

  Non-Fiction

  The Rash Adventurer:

  The Rise and Fall of Charles Edward Stuart

  William Makepeace Thackeray:

  Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman

  Significant Sisters:

  The Grassroots of Active Feminism 1838–1939

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Daphne du Maurier

  Hidden Lives

  Rich Desserts & Captain’s Thin:

  A Family & Their Times 1831–1931

  Precious Lives

  Good Wives?

  Mary, Fanny, Jennie & Me 1845–2001

  Poetry

  Selected Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Editor)

  To the memory of

  GILLIAN PRYCE –

  for her cheerfulness,

  her spark,

  her optimism

  Is There Anything You Want?

  Margaret Forster

  And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?

  I did.

  And what did you want?

  To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

  ‘Late Fragment’, Raymond Carver

  PART I

  1

  The Clinic

  MRS HIBBERT WAS a Friend. In her own mind, it gave her a status she otherwise lacked: she was a Friend of St Mary’s Hospital, someone known to give her time to help others. She was the most senior of all those who belonged to this association of Friends and was regarded with respect and, in some cases, awe. She rarely spoke to the other Friends, except to say a polite good afternoon, and her arrival in the little room off the hospital’s main entrance hall, where Friends met and deposited their coats, stopped any conversation instantly. This did not worry Mrs Hibbert in the slightest. She was perfectly comfortable with the sudden silence, taking it as a tribute to her seniority. There was work to be done, serious work, and it ought to be approached solemnly. She took off her jacket and busied herself fixing her armband to her sleeve. The armband was red with ‘Friend of St Mary’s’ stamped in black letters upon it. It fastened with a Velcro strip, making it easy to fit on to any arm except for the very fattest. Mrs Hibbert’s arm was stout and strong but the armband encompassed it easily. Ready to take up her position, she nodded at the other Friends and walked out into the entrance hall to begin her particular duties. As ever, she felt alert and eager, ready to support all those who were coming in fear and trembling for their appointments and unsure how to make their way. She would sort them out. She would give them confidence. She would soothe their troubled spirits.

  Taking up her position in the centre of the busy entrance hall, to the left of the reception desk and immediately in front of the doors, Mrs Hibbert hummed. She hummed to the tune of her favourite hymn ‘Who would true valour see’, knowing that such was the constant commotion no one could possibly hear her. While she hummed, she scanned the faces of everyone entering, trying to assess to whom she would need to offer help. Some were easy to spot. Those who went on hovering near the desk, even though they had been given directions, were approached by her before they had any more time to worry. ‘Can I help you?’ she would say, and their gratitude was touching. Sometimes, she took very nervous patients all the way to wherever they were supposed to go, chatting to encourage them to relax. Their appreciation was gratifying. She would hear moving stories of suffering and try to reassure the narrators. ‘Never give up hope,’ she would say. But sometimes, nerves made patients utterly silent. Who knew what was going on in their heads? Who knew how great was their need?

  Mrs Hibbert was in her element.

  *

  Edwina talked to herself in her head. Avoid that woman, that Friend, she said, that creature out to catch people. Edwina sidestepped her, as she always did. She would follow the yellow line, oh yes, follow the thin yellow line, that was all she needed to do, that was what she’d been told to do at reception, the first time, just follow the yellow line. It wasn’t yellow, not what she would call yellow, it was cream, a sickly cream. The red beside it wasn’t red either, it was maroon. Were they colour-blind? Only the green was green, fresh and bright beside the others. She wished she had to follow the green, but where did it lead to? No, hers was the yellow line: follow it, pretend to be Dorothy, pretend the Tin Man and the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion are beside you. Dance along, think of the magic. Oh, it’s what is wanted. Magic!

  End of the yellow line. Full stop. No, not a full stop, a right turning, an arrow. Bye-bye red and green lines, wherever you are going. The clinic. Mr Wallis’s clinic. Quite small, the area. A square. Metal chairs, arranged in rows. Grey metal chairs, three rows of ten. All joined together, riveted to the floor. Who would want to steal them? Who would want to throw them? Such hard seats, uncomfortable, no cushions. Where should she sit? Oh, at the end of a row, certainly. Nearest to the door, yes. At the end of a row, then she won’t be stuck between two others. Good thinking. Near the door, then she could escape easily. If she had to, if she dared, if she was silly. Silly to think of escape. This is not a prison. Isn’t it? No. Nobo
dy is here yet. Well of course they’re not. She is early, very early; not even the clinic’s own receptionist is here yet. Much too early. No one else is foolish enough to come forty minutes before the clinic begins. But it isn’t foolish. It is smart. It shows she is experienced, an old hand. They can’t fool her. Come for 2 p.m., the time on her card, the time of her appointment? Three other women will have been given the same time. She knows they will. She can’t be fooled. First card handed in, first patient seen. Simple. She will be first.

  So. Here she is. Early. Sitting alone in this dreary place. Heuga felt squares on the floor, moved around many times, stains on them all. Doesn’t seem hygienic. Why not lino? Why not wood? Such a dusty rubber plant in the corner. Needs cleaning, needs some cotton wool, soaked in milk, wiped over each leaf. Tin wastepaper basket, lined with a black bin-liner. A black plastic table, coffee-table size, piles of magazines. Old, torn magazines, much thumbed. At least look through them. Mostly women’s magazines, the covers promising makeovers of rooms and faces, offering free packets of shampoo attached inside, but taken out long ago, naturally. One copy of a wildlife magazine at the bottom, mysteriously pristine. She takes it to her seat. Lovely photographs. Lovely birds. Lovely colours. She can’t read the words, though. They blur. She blinks repeatedly, to clear the blur. She blinks in time to a beating in her head. She tells herself to stop it. Be calm. Calm.

  Footsteps. Brisk, confident footsteps. It’s the receptionist. Good afternoon, she says, snapping on the lights in her corner. It isn’t a corner really, more of an alcove. Has she said good afternoon in reply? No, just grunted, but the receptionist doesn’t notice. She is busy. She bustles. The small space is filled with her bustling. Switching switches on, connecting unseen things, emptying her bag, listening to messages on the answerphone, making notes. Arranging herself, getting ready. She’s organised now. Get up and present the card. Accepted. Return to seat, no words spoken except thank you, by both of them. More footsteps. Other early arrivals, though not really so early, it’s two minutes to two. Do not look up. Fatal. No eye contact, ever. Still, two people are within her line of vision even as she studiously avoids looking up at them. Two sets of legs, both wearing trousers, but one set obviously female, one male. The man here as a support. Crowded clinics because of women’s support systems. Hardly anyone comes on her own. Husbands, partners, brought to endure with them, willing or not. Sometimes mothers, sisters, friends, all taking up places on the thirty chairs. Feeble. She should not be scornful, why shouldn’t women have support, if it helps, but momentarily she is proud of herself. She is terrified, sick with apprehension, but she manages alone. Why put Harry through this misery, why drag Emma or Laura through it? No. She will manage. And not just to spare them. Harry would make her even more nervous. He can’t sit still. Up, down, up, down, fussing, complaining. It would drive her mad. Harry doesn’t do waiting, for anything. Emma might cry, she’s sensitive, and Laura might get angry. Easier to be on her own. Easier not even to have told them she’s here. Harry forgets the date. She doesn’t conceal appointments from him but she doesn’t draw attention to them either. He ought to remember, but he doesn’t. She won’t even tell him she’s been today, unless she has to. Unless she is obliged to because . . . No. Please, no.

  These other early arrivals have chosen to sit in the middle of the left-hand row of seats. The legs are seated. The man is wearing trainers, the woman moccasin-type shoes. Rather jolly ones, red, with little tassels. She can just glimpse their hands hanging down in the narrow space between the seats. They are holding hands, slightly furtively. They are talking. The man is saying something very quietly. Something personal, she’s sure. Comforting, maybe. She can’t quite hear. There is a sound of sniffing. Is the woman crying? Possibly. The hands separate and a tissue is pushed into the woman’s hand. Well, there’s often crying going on, if it is crying, in this place. Never laughter. She’s never heard laughter among those waiting, though sometimes there are inexplicable bursts of it from staff rushing through. It’s always a shocking sound, such hilarity. But now there’s another familiar noise. Rumblings, squeakings. She knows what it means. A bed. In a minute, through the open door, a bed passes, wheeled along by a porter with a nurse in attendance, holding a drip steady. There’s a woman lying in the bed, eyes open and staring upwards. She’s quite young. Hair scraped back, bones of the face startlingly prominent, a yellow tinge to the skin. Her hands, above the bedcovers, are plucking at the white, open-weave blanket. She is travelling from one ward to another, or perhaps from or to an operating theatre. Travelling like a Pharaoh to another world, but where are her worldly goods? The bed has sides to it, which are pulled up, and as it passes the clinic door the woman suddenly switches her stare, gazes through the bars into the clinic. Help me, her eyes plead. But that’s fanciful. Probably she is doped up. Mercifully, she probably has no idea where she is or what is happening.

  Edwina feels nauseous. She swallows repeatedly, but can’t prevent the rush of saliva into her mouth, filling it. Hastily, she takes a handkerchief from her bag and surreptitiously spits into it. Then she delves into her bag again and finds some tissues and blows her nose. This helps. A glass of water would help more, but she does not want to draw attention to herself by going in search of one. Her discomfort is her own fault. She broke her own rules. She looked up, she saw that woman in the bed. Never look at anyone, it is the only way. She has learned again a lesson she thought she had learned before. She goes back to looking at people only from the waist down, and now there are plenty of them coming into the clinic. A sequence of trousers and skirts, of boots and shoes. The seats are filling up. Each time someone sits down, all the seats shake. They might be firmly attached to the floor and welded together, but the combined weight of ten people in each row seems to affect their stability. It is going to happen any minute. Yes. A woman sits down next to her. A large woman, a fat woman. Her thighs spill over the sides of her seat, her bottom is cruelly caught. Move away from being touched by her. Move! But it’s impossible, there is no room to move. The contact can’t be avoided, the pressure of this fat woman’s thigh, so warm, pressing so tightly. Perhaps crossing legs will help. It does, fractionally. The fat woman is sighing. She is murmuring. Oh dear, Oh dear. There is no doubt about it, she is going to want to talk. Here it comes, the starter question, what time is your appointment? She answers. She has to. But she will not let this go any further. Politeness is one thing, friendliness another. She does not have to be chummy, absolutely not. So, after she has replied that her appointment was for two o’clock, she ostentatiously closes her eyes and leans back in her seat to signify that she does not want to talk. But the fat woman does not read these signs correctly. ‘Are you all right, dear?’ she asks. This has to be dealt with. She says she is. But there is no stopping her neighbour who resorts now to a monologue. She is enraged because it is already twenty minutes past two and nobody has been seen, and the clinic is nearly full. She thinks this is a scandal. She says nobody could run a business like this. She wants agreement that the NHS is collapsing.

  She isn’t going to get it. Stay silent. Good, the fat woman has turned to the patient on her other side who, by the sound of it, is happy to chatter. Edwina keeps her eyes closed still, but ponders whether she does indeed think it a scandal, all this waiting. Not really. She assumes there are reasons for it. Doctors wouldn’t deliberately keep patients waiting. It would be bad for their health. Anyway, she hasn’t the energy to get worked up about it. It is better to be cow-like and simply accept how things are, though Laura wouldn’t agree. She herself can only cope by staying remote from everything, it’s as basic as that. She opens her eyes cautiously. She thinks about changing seats. Her face feels so hot, her forehead greasy with sweat. She wants to get away from the fat woman’s presence. But there is only one seat left and it has women on either side who are clearly in a bad way. One is wearing a bandage round her neck and is having trouble holding her head up. It lolls pathetically. The other radiates tension.
She sits ramrod-straight, handbag on knees pushed tightly together, cream-coloured raincoat buttoned up to the neck. She is wearing dark glasses. What a good idea, one to be copied, Edwina thinks. There is a lot of activity now, constant comings and goings, people carrying boxes, people with clipboards. Hardly any of them wear uniforms. It is impossible to tell who on earth they are. Not even all the doctors wear white coats. In fact, she can’t recall seeing a white coat for years. White coats have come to be thought of as intimidating, or so she’d read. She didn’t find them intimidating. She found them reassuring, she liked doctors to wear them. The receptionist’s telephone rings all the time. The receptionist takes her time answering. Resentment is beginning to build up. It is not only the fat woman who is agitated. A man has gone up to the desk. He is saying his wife’s appointment – he gestures, it is the woman with the neck bandage – was for two-fifteen and now it is twothirty-three and no sign of anything happening. He is saying, in a bad-tempered, hectoring manner, that he is not prepared to put up with this sort of treatment, his wife deserves better, yes, she does.

  And at that moment a nurse comes in. A nurse in a dark blue uniform. A Sister. At least nurses still wear uniforms, their rank clearly denoted. All eyes follow her. There is a general shuffling of feet, an outbreak of coughing, a general minor agitation. The nurse says she’s sorry about the late start but it has been unavoidable. She doesn’t say why. Nobody asks her why. Then she reads out the first five names. Hers is the very first, as it should be since her card was the first handed in.

  ‘Mrs Edwina Green?’ she calls.

  *

  Edwina knows the procedure. She knows the routine. She moves towards the weighing scales without being told, and slips her shoes off. Nine stone 3 pounds. The nurse says her weight out loud before writing it down. She gives it in kilos, but Edwina has already looked at the dial and translated it into the measurement she understands. Nine stone 3 pounds is good. It is excellent. She feels a flutter of relief, a lifting of the weight in her head. She knew she was 9 stone 3 pounds, she’d weighed herself that morning, but it is good to have it confirmed and written down. No weight loss in a year. In fact, 1 pound weight gain. Very, very good. Cubicle three, the nurse says, pop your clothes off except for your pants and put a gown on. Cubicle three is good news too. For some reason, it is more spacious than the others, she always feels less claustrophobic in there, not so much like a horse trapped in a horse-box. She goes into cubicle three and snibs the door. There are two parts to the cubicle. This first section reminds her of the changing cubicles at the swimming baths when she was a child, with its shelf-like seat at the back and the wooden pegs above to hang clothes on. She takes her clothes off and hangs them up. She’s dressed today with this stripping in mind. Nothing that takes time to undo. A sweater which pulls over her head, a pair of trousers with an easy zip and no buttons, slip-on shoes. The floor feels cold to her bare feet, but she welcomes the chill. The floor doesn’t look too clean, though. She will probably pick up a verruca. She puts on the blue cotton gown provided. At least that is clean. As usual, the Velcro fastenings have come adrift. Two ripped off, one not sticking, only one working. She clutches the gown round her and opens the other door which leads into the examination cubicle.