The Laying on of Hands: Stories by Alan Bennett Page A

being poorly again it wasn’t practical anyway. Which it wasn’t.
    So it was back to normal, sitting with Bernard, doing a few little jobs. I’d forgotten how long an evening could be.
    Anyway, I was coming away from work one night and a big browny-coloured car draws up beside me, the window comes down and blow me if it isn’t Mr Dunderdale.
    He said, ‘Good evening, Miss Fozzard. Could I tempt you up to Lawnswood? I’d like a little chat.’ I said, ‘Could we not talk here?’ He said, ‘Not in the way I’d like. I’m on a double yellow line.’ So I get in and he runs me up there and whatever else you can say about him he’s a very accomplished driver.
    Anyway he sits me down in his study and gives me a glass of sherry and says why did I not want to come and see him any more. Well, I didn’t know what to say. I said, ‘It isn’t as if I don’t look forward to my appointments.’ He said, ‘Well, dear lady, I look forward to them too.’ I said, ‘But now that I have to get help in for Bernard again I can’t afford to pay you.’
    He said, ‘Well, may I make a suggestion? Why don’t we reverse the arrangement?’ I said, ‘Come again.’ He said, ‘Do it vice versa. I pay you.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s very unusual.’ He said, ‘You’re a very unusual woman.’ I said, ‘I am? Why?’ He said, ‘Because you’re a free spirit, Miss Fozzard. You make your own rules.’ I said, ‘Well, I like to think so.’ He said, ‘I’m the same. We’re two of a kind, you and I, Miss Fozzard. Mavericks. Have you ever had any champagne?’ I said, ‘No, but I’ve seen it at the conclusion of motor races.’ He said, ‘Allow me. To the future?’
    It’s all very decorous. Quite often he’ll make us a hot drink and we’ll just sit and turn over the pages of one of his many books on the subject, or converse on matters related. I remarked the other day how I’d read that Imelda Marcos had a lot of shoes. He said, ‘She did … and she suffered for it at the bar of world opinion, in my view, Miss Fozzard, unjustly.’
    Little envelope on the hall table as I go out, never mentioned, and if there’s been anything beyond the call of duty there’ll be that little bit extra. Buys me no end of shoes, footwear generally. I keep thinking where’s it all going to end but we’ll walk that plank when we come to it.
    I’ve never had the knack of making things happen. I thought things happened or they didn’t. Which is to say they didn’t. Only now they have … sort of.
    Bernard gets an attendance allowance now and what with that and the envelopes from Mr Dunderdale I can stay on at work and still have someone in to look after him. Man this time. Mr Albright. Pensioner, so he’s glad of a job. Classy little feller, keen on railways and reckons to be instigating Bernard into the mysteries of chess. Though Mr Albright has to play both sides of course.
    At one point I said to Mr Dunderdale, ‘People might think this rather peculiar particularly in Lawnswood.’ He said, ‘Well, people would be wrong. We are just enthusiasts, Miss Fozzard, you and I and there’s not enough enthusiasm in the world these days. Now if those Wellingtons are comfy I just want you in your own time and as slowly as you like very gently to mark time on my bottom.’
    Occasionally he’ll have some music on. I said once, ‘I suppose that makes this the same as aerobics.’ He said, ‘If you like.’
    It’s droll but the only casualty in all this is my feet, because nowadays the actual chiropody gets pushed to one side a bit. If I want an MOT I really have to nail him down.
    We’re still Mr Dunderdale and Miss Fozzard and I’ve not said anything to anybody at work. Learned my lesson there.
    Anyway, people keep saying how well I look.
    I SUPPOSE THERE’S A WORD for what I’m doing but … I skirt round it.

Father! Father! Burning Bright
     

    O n the many occasions Midgley had killed his father, death had always come easily. He