More Things Nice

( 'Great stuff as always' and 'A pleasure to read' - it's neat when a story competition judge recognises you and has such a positive thing to say to you. These comments just received last night. Here below is another Friday piece from PB.)

GOING OVER OLD GROUND

‘I’ve been thinking about retirement.’

He said it as if it was something new. He said it quietly, as if he didn’t really mean it. She’d heard the speech before and did not stop the filing she was doing.

‘It’s maybe time. Long past time. Don’t you think?’

Marjory said she agreed. It’s what she always said. And she did agree. She had been telling him the exact same thing for more than five years. But she couldn’t see what he would do if he did retire. She understood that it was this that kept him going. At least part of it was that. The pictures behind him on the wall also had something to do with it. He was connected to things here in Port Brokeferry and he couldn’t just walk away from everything. Retiring would feel like giving up on all of that. To him it would. She knew that was what he thought.

‘Well?’ he said.

There was no point in engaging in the discussion, she thought. It was well worn territory by now. They’d been going round in circles on the subject for several years. Whenever there was a crisis. She wondered what was worrying him today.

‘I am serious this time. What happened yesterday convinced me.’

‘What happened yesterday?’ she said, not knowing what he was meaning.

‘With old Tom.’

She stopped then. She laid down the remaining files and turned to face Doctor Kerr. He looked worn and anxious. His hand was shaking as he reached for his pen. Marjory noticed.

‘You did everything you could. He’s in hospital now. It’s the right place for him to be.’

‘I know that,’ he said. ‘But I should have moved him to the hospital sooner.’

Marjory argued that it would have made no difference. She couldn’t see what he had done wrong. Nothing any different from how he would have done things twenty years ago. That’s what she said. He wasn’t listening to her. He was shaking his head and slowly clicking the pen in his hand.

‘No, Marjory. It’s time.’

‘Far be it for me to be trying to talk you out of what I have been saying is the right move for long enough. Maybe it is time. But not for the reason you give.’

He stopped clicking the pen and stared ahead.

It was silent for a while in the room. Not even the gulls on the other side of the glass seemed to have anything to say. Doctor Kerr breathed deep. It felt as though a weight had been lifted from him. He smiled at Marjory. ‘I mean it,’ he said.

Of course it would take time for the wheels to turn and for a new doctor to be installed. He’d perhaps need to help out a little at first. But he felt as though a decision had been made.

Then he wondered what Marjory would do.

‘It is the right thing, isn’t it?’ he said.

'It's the right thing for both of us,' she said, and she reached across the desk to take his hand.