The Proper Procedure and Other Stories by Theodore Dalrymple

Author:Theodore Dalrymple [Dalrymple, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: New English Review Press
Published: 2017-07-31T21:00:00+00:00

Your letter surprised me because I was not aware that I was any more to you than just another patient among many others.

It would be very pleasant to meet again. If it is convenient for you, please ring me on the number above, and we will arrange things.

With kind regards.

Yours sincerely.

Two days later, at about six in the evening, Mr Montagu’s telephone rang.

‘Can I speak to Mr Montagu, please.’

‘Speaking.’

‘I am Victoria Lee – Miss.’

‘How are you, Miss Lee?’ Mr Montagu felt at once that his question sounded odd, false even, as if she had been the patient and he the nurse.

‘I am very well, thank you, Mr Montagu,’ said Miss Lee.

There followed a stilted conversation during which the real subject on their minds was not mentioned. It was like being an adolescent again, Mr Montagu thought: awkward and unsure how to proceed.

They discussed Mr Montagu’s scar (completely healed) and his bowel habit (once again regular after a period of turbulence), and finally agreed to meet in an Italian restaurant, neither plush nor basic, expensive nor cheap, at a time of the evening neither early nor late.

After an initial period of awkwardness, the evening went surprisingly well. After one drink, Miss Lee flushed a little and began to laugh in a bird-like, but not stupid, way. She began to call him Montagu, as if that were his first name, and he found it charming. She told him about her life in Malaya, which is where she came from; her father, until his death, had had a shop in a small town on the banks of a great brown river. Mr Montagu told her proudly of his children, his son an advertising executive, and his daughter a producer at the BBC.

She had wanted desperately to escape the muddy banks and sacks of rice among which she had grown up. How she had loved the asphalt and paving when she had first come to England to train as a nurse, that did not turn slithery in the rain! How wonderful to get away from all that bargaining, all that haggling, with its bogus protestations of inability to pay more or to accept less! Here, you just decided what you wanted and whether you could afford it; no nerve-wracking trials of will. It was possible to live quietly here, with no one knowing, or caring, who you were or what you did.

At the end of the evening, they agreed to go to the theatre together.

Miss Lee began to stay three or four nights a week in Mr Montagu’s elegant flat. She did not move in completely, nor did either of them suggest that she should. She kept her own flat and Mr Montagu never went there. Nor did she ever meet his children: they were not kept out of sight of each other, but somehow their paths never crossed. It was the perfect arrangement, a permanent courtship.

They went to the theatre together, to concerts, the cinema, restaurants. Mr Montagu would buy her small things – trinkets, really, but expensive – that pleased her inordinately.

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