Read Online Another Kind of Country by Kevin Brophy - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kevin Brophy
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‘C’mon, Mum, tell me nice and slowly. Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.’ Sometimes they changed her tablets or the dosage, you never could tell with this pharmaceutical shit. One of these days he was really going to dig into that stinking industry and expose it for the cesspool it was.
‘It’s horrible, Patrick. Another letter came this morning, that’s the second one, and somebody phoned yesterday – in the morning, I was having a cuppa while I was reading the
Telegraph
—’
‘Mum, what letters are you talking about?’
Silence on the line. His mother would be sitting on the piano stool they kept beside the polished occasional table in the hallway, phone clenched in bony fingers, cigarette burning in the cut-glass ashtray on the table beside the phone.
‘They’re saying things about your father, Patrick, horrible things.’
‘What things?’
‘I can’t . . .’ Millerwas afraid she’d start crying again. ‘They’re too horrible for me to say, Patrick, just too horrible and disgusting.’
Poison-pen letters about Dr Sir Roger Miller, distinguished gynaecologist, knight of the realm and avowed enemy of the National Health Service.
How fucking inevitable
.
‘Two letters, Patrick, saying these dreadful things and then – can you believe it? – signing himself “a well-wisher”. Whoever he is, he’s not a well-wisher, is he, Patrick?’
‘No, Mum, I don’t think so. It’s just some nasty person trying to stir up trouble.’
Who is this?
‘Have you told Dad about the letters, Mum?’
‘Of course not. You know how busy your father is, night, noon and morning at his surgery and at the hospital and then somebody writes these awful things about him – I can’t distress him with these letters, can I, Patrick?’
After all these years, Miller thought, you still love my father. Despite everything, you still keep your eyes closed because you’re afraid to open them. And you love being Lady Miller, wife of Dr Sir Roger, ennobled by the Queen herself at Buckingham Palace. No wonder you’re on medication. No wonder you escape into your private worlds of polishing and scrubbing and chemical-fuelled fantasy, washed down with sherry or wine or whatever is to hand.
‘Why do people do these things, Patrick?’
‘I don’t know, Mum.’ Why did the people of Britain elect a maniac like Thatcher? Why do we aid and abet in the destruction of our own society?
He heard the dragging on the cigarette, saw the jewelled fingers clawing at the untipped Senior Service, knew that she was pulling herself together. Until the next time.
‘Are you in that paper today, Patrick?’
‘It’s Thursday, Mum, I’m in the paper on Wednesdays.’
‘So you were in it yesterday.’
‘Yes, Mum, my piecewas in it yesterday.’
‘Sometimes I remember to buy it, just to look at your little photograph at the top, but it upsets your father, that paper does, you know what he thinks of it.’
A red rag. A comic. No better than an undergraduate offering – and with even less sense
. Any upright British subject – especially one elevated at Buckingham Palace by the sovereign – could only recoil from it in distaste.
‘Yes, Mum, I know Dad doesn’t read the
Guardian
. But maybe you should tell him about that phone call and let him read those letters.’
‘I couldn’t do that, Patrick. Maybe I should just burn them. But – you’ll come to visit soon, Patrick, won’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Back to a polished mausoleum of the living dead, where the only words ever spoken were words that avoided and/or concealed the truth. Where nobody ever asked,
Who is this?
‘You promise, Patrick? We haven’t seen you for so long.’
‘Yes, Mum, I promise.’
‘Just don’t talk politics, Patrick, you know how your father is about all that stuff.’
‘Yes, Mum, I know.’
‘Sometimes,’ she drew on the cigarette again, he could see her powdered cheeks hollowing, ‘sometimes I think you don’t know your
‘C’mon, Mum, tell me nice and slowly. Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.’ Sometimes they changed her tablets or the dosage, you never could tell with this pharmaceutical shit. One of these days he was really going to dig into that stinking industry and expose it for the cesspool it was.
‘It’s horrible, Patrick. Another letter came this morning, that’s the second one, and somebody phoned yesterday – in the morning, I was having a cuppa while I was reading the
Telegraph
—’
‘Mum, what letters are you talking about?’
Silence on the line. His mother would be sitting on the piano stool they kept beside the polished occasional table in the hallway, phone clenched in bony fingers, cigarette burning in the cut-glass ashtray on the table beside the phone.
‘They’re saying things about your father, Patrick, horrible things.’
‘What things?’
‘I can’t . . .’ Millerwas afraid she’d start crying again. ‘They’re too horrible for me to say, Patrick, just too horrible and disgusting.’
Poison-pen letters about Dr Sir Roger Miller, distinguished gynaecologist, knight of the realm and avowed enemy of the National Health Service.
How fucking inevitable
.
‘Two letters, Patrick, saying these dreadful things and then – can you believe it? – signing himself “a well-wisher”. Whoever he is, he’s not a well-wisher, is he, Patrick?’
‘No, Mum, I don’t think so. It’s just some nasty person trying to stir up trouble.’
Who is this?
‘Have you told Dad about the letters, Mum?’
‘Of course not. You know how busy your father is, night, noon and morning at his surgery and at the hospital and then somebody writes these awful things about him – I can’t distress him with these letters, can I, Patrick?’
After all these years, Miller thought, you still love my father. Despite everything, you still keep your eyes closed because you’re afraid to open them. And you love being Lady Miller, wife of Dr Sir Roger, ennobled by the Queen herself at Buckingham Palace. No wonder you’re on medication. No wonder you escape into your private worlds of polishing and scrubbing and chemical-fuelled fantasy, washed down with sherry or wine or whatever is to hand.
‘Why do people do these things, Patrick?’
‘I don’t know, Mum.’ Why did the people of Britain elect a maniac like Thatcher? Why do we aid and abet in the destruction of our own society?
He heard the dragging on the cigarette, saw the jewelled fingers clawing at the untipped Senior Service, knew that she was pulling herself together. Until the next time.
‘Are you in that paper today, Patrick?’
‘It’s Thursday, Mum, I’m in the paper on Wednesdays.’
‘So you were in it yesterday.’
‘Yes, Mum, my piecewas in it yesterday.’
‘Sometimes I remember to buy it, just to look at your little photograph at the top, but it upsets your father, that paper does, you know what he thinks of it.’
A red rag. A comic. No better than an undergraduate offering – and with even less sense
. Any upright British subject – especially one elevated at Buckingham Palace by the sovereign – could only recoil from it in distaste.
‘Yes, Mum, I know Dad doesn’t read the
Guardian
. But maybe you should tell him about that phone call and let him read those letters.’
‘I couldn’t do that, Patrick. Maybe I should just burn them. But – you’ll come to visit soon, Patrick, won’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Back to a polished mausoleum of the living dead, where the only words ever spoken were words that avoided and/or concealed the truth. Where nobody ever asked,
Who is this?
‘You promise, Patrick? We haven’t seen you for so long.’
‘Yes, Mum, I promise.’
‘Just don’t talk politics, Patrick, you know how your father is about all that stuff.’
‘Yes, Mum, I know.’
‘Sometimes,’ she drew on the cigarette again, he could see her powdered cheeks hollowing, ‘sometimes I think you don’t know your
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