text:
ALAN BENNETT

# Allelujah!

_with an introduction by the author_

And thou most kind and gentle death,

Waiting to hush our latest breath.

O praise him! Alleluia!

# Contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Epigraph
  3. Acknowledgements
  4. Introduction
  5. Premiere Production
  6. Characters
  7. Allelujah!
  8. Part One
  9. Part Two
  10. About the Author
  11. By the Same Author
  12. Musical Numbers
  13. Copyright

# Acknowledgements

_Allelujah!_ has turned out to be a much bigger proposition than I'd imagined when I'd finished writing it. I blithely included a possible choir without indicating how many singers there were or what or where they should sing. My only stipulation was that it shouldn't include the geriatric Horst Wessel 'I am h-a-p-p-y'. Nicholas Hytner, to whom after twenty-eight years of working together I am almost routinely indebted, saw more possibilities in the play than I had, seizing on my brief stage directions to make the choir a staple feature of the production and with dance besides. This brought in my friend and long-term collaborator George Fenton who has arranged the music and, in charge of the (to me, wonderful) dancing, Arlene Phillips. The pair of them have coaxed out of the cast music and movement of which they may have thought themselves incapable. I hope they have found the experience enjoyable; neither singer nor dancer myself, I have often envied them. We have had much help and encouragement from our medical advisor Jonathan Sheldon and also from the staff of various hospitals, particularly Leeds General Infirmary, Killingbeck Hospital in Leeds and St Mary's, Paddington.

In his opening talk to the cast, Nicholas Hytner said, 'We may not get it right but we will get it real.' I'd like to thank everyone who has helped in that process.

# Introduction

I have been writing plays (slightly to my surprise) for fifty years and more and it is a bit late in the day to confess that I tend to write before I do the research. Otherwise, knowing myself, I'm likely to get too interested not to say bogged down in the facts and so never get round to the play itself.

I first realised this in the 1960s when I was just beginning as a writer, putting together sketches for the Saturday night TV shows that came after _That Was the Week that Was_. I knew nothing about television and not much more about sketch writing and so made the mistake of over-researching a topic in order to pull out facts that the audience didn't know. This may have been informative but it wasn't always funny and I learned early on that in order to interest and amuse an audience one needed to know more than they did but not much more. Ever since I've tended to write first and ask questions afterwards. One of the many reasons why I'm happily paired with Nicholas Hytner is that he is of a more literal cast of mind and readily researches the necessary background, querying many of my fanciful notions before putting them to rights. Notably in this play he saw straightaway that in my original draft I was confusing a geriatric ward with a care home and that the difference must be made plain.

I did have some excuse. In theory a geriatric ward is confined to patients who need medical attention because they are ill. They may be ill because they are elderly but age alone does not qualify them for the geriatric ward. It does qualify them for a care home which is for the elderly who don't require medical attention but do need round-the-clock  care. That the difference is not always obvious is because a patient on a geriatric ward who has recovered can't always be discharged since there is nowhere to dis charge him or her to... no relative willing or able to have them, no vacancy in a care home that would, not to mention the possible expense. So they stay put in the geriatric ward and become bed-blockers and in the process the geriatric ward becomes more like a care home than the hospital would like.

Seldom in hospital myself until I was in my sixties such experience as I've had has found its way into the play. When I was first hospitalised as a young man nurses were more likely to be disciplinarians than they are today. Beds were squared off and kept in apple-pie order pending the awed arrival of the consultant with his respectful train of underlings. Nowadays nurses have been robbed of their starch and doctors of their white coats and consultants have been known actually to sit on a patient's bed, all of them casualties of deference and its decline.

The kindest nurse I ever came across wasn't a nurse at all. Having been operated on for bowel cancer in 1997 I'd been admitted a few months later to the old Middlesex Hospital off Goodge Street with acute pains in my stomach which were unsurprisingly thought to be a recurrence. Thank fully this proved not to be the case, the culprit an abscess on what remained of my appendix. This had to be drained via a tube introduced through the wall of the stomach. Assuming this would be done under Valium (a drug I've always found delightful), I was unworried and indeed the procedure seemed quite casual, taking place in a curtained alcove off quite a busy corridor in the basement. The doctor with a medical student in attendance busied himself with his preparations which included positioning the screen so that he could follow the tube tracing the source of the infection. It was only when I felt a winding blow to my stomach that I realised there was going to be no anaesthetic and not even a painkiller.

As this scalding snake felt its way round my gut I was in agony, though the doctor and the student, both intent on their screen, seemed indifferent to my cries of pain. At this moment a young man came down the corridor, not a doctor certainly and not, I think, a nurse, but just a theatre orderly in hospital greens. Sizing up the situation, unasked he stopped and took my hand. It can only have been a minute or two before the abscess was found and a drain introduced but it was long enough for me to think that this uncalled-for gesture was perhaps the kindest thing anyone had ever done for me. As the drain began to produce pus in gratifying quantities the young man patted my arm and went on his way.

It's at this point that life connects with art and the story becomes relevant, as afterwards the doctor made the student examine my emaciated stomach to see if he could find the slight pulse which would be an indication of peristalsis, the automatic muscular contractions by which the contents of the alimentary canal are propelled through the body. It's the procedure which Dr Valentine in the play explains to Colman as a (slightly far-fetched) metaphor for the slow and steady working of the hospital itself. Back on the ward I tried to find out who was my Samaritan but without success, though I was later told that he had become a doctor himself. I hope so.

In one respect the play makes no attempt at realism. Though mitigated these days by the laptop any ward is still dominated by the television screen, chattering away and the background to pain, sorrow and even death. In our hospital I imagine the TV has been banished to a so-called quiet room though in a proper hospital this would probably be unacceptable.

The absence of television is matched by the non-presence of visitors. Though patients on a geriatric ward are more likely to have visitors than the inmates of a care home, a geriatric ward is hardly a magnet for friends and family –  friends mostly dead and family getting on with their lives. It's more likely to be duty than affection that brings company to an old person's bedside. And once there what to say as one sits by the bed, these wearisome visits less like meetings than periods of sentry duty with the visitor on the look-out for some glimmer of hope or sense. The whole scenario is definitively dealt with in Charles Causley's poem, 'Ten Types of Hospital Visitor', which is quoted in the play.

One of the main characters in the play is Salter, the chairman of the Hospital Trust. He is much in evidence, talking to the nurses, welcoming new arrivals, very much – and perhaps implausibly for a chairman – hands on. My doubts about Salter's over-eager involvement were stilled when the director and the designer, Bob Crowley, visited several hospitals in the interest of authenticity and several nurses reassured them that cameras were always a magnet and, 'If there's filming going on, the chairman's never away.'

Writing a play I have never tried to hide the sound of my own voice. It hasn't always been where an audience or a critic has thought to find it and certainly not always in the mouth of the leading character. It's often a divided voice or a dissenting one; two things (at least) are being said and I am not always sure which one I agree with. But that is one reason why I write plays: one can speak with a divided voice. In _Allelujah!_ it means that I have some sympathy with Salter and with Nurse Gilchrist, neither of whom is entirely sympathetic. I subscribe to Chekhov's dictum that, 'It is the writer's business not to accuse and not to prosecute but to champion the guilty once they are condemned and suffer punishment.'

Staged as it is in my eighty-fourth year the play could be taken as a would-be apotheosis though I hope not. It does include occasional jokes that have been with me half my writing life without (perhaps understandably) ever finding a place. Was it at Pontefract Barracks during my basic  training in the infantry in 1952 or a few years later in the Ministry of Pensions hospital in Leeds that I heard another soldier make the sauce bottle remark? Now, after sixty years, Joe has it to say. Or I hope he does. That depends if it survives the rehearsals which at the time of writing have not yet started. One of Nicholas Hytner's skills is as a surgeon, slicing away such inessentials – a cosmetic surgeon perhaps, doing lipectomies but never trespassing into the vitals. There will be cuts and alterations so that the script one ends up with is a bit of a bumpy field, the mounds and hollows reminiscent of a deserted village – Wharram Percy it would be, the famous deserted village in North York shire. With ditches marking the site of lost dialogue and occasional tracks that lead nowhere, for me all my plays have a touch of Wharram Percy.

Plays as I first submit them to Nicholas Hytner are generally quite loose-fitting garments which can then be tailored to his (and sometimes the cast's) strengths and requirements. Also doing the tailoring in _Allelujah!_ is George Fenton who has arranged the music and whom I've known all my working life as he began his career as a young actor in my first play _Forty Years On._

I have always thought there is an element of unsought prophecy in plays: write it and it happens. With this play it's been almost embarrassing. Lest I be thought to be trailing behind the facts I should say that Valentine's trouble over his visa was written months before the Windrush business. I had originally intended Valentine to be an older doctor, brought out of retirement by the hospital because of shortage of staff. In which case to refuse him a visa would have seemed more shocking, though no more so than the treatment meted out to the long-established immigrants who were so callously singled out.

If not quite a platform, a play is certainly a plinth, a small eminence from which to address the world, hold forth about one's concerns or the concerns of one's characters.  But not to preach. That is forbidden, though the fact that I always like it when a character steps out of the play and addresses the audience is evidence that I am a thwarted preacher with no other way than this to broadcast my paltry epiphanies. I never like feeling boxed-in by the fourth wall. In this play, though, that problem is to some extent sidestepped as the characters can within the play still address the roving camera, though some more furtively than others. It's only in the last few minutes that Valentine gets to speak unmediated to the audience, by which time he has earned the right... and maybe that's why he smiles.

Alan Bennett
May 2018

#  Premiere Production

**Allelujah!** was first performed at the Bridge Theatre, London, on 11 July 2018. The cast, in alphabetical order, was as follows:

PATIENTS

**Molly** Jacqueline Chan

**Mrs Maudsley** Jacqueline Clarke

**Mavi** s Patricia England

**Mary** Julia Foster

**Arthur** Colin Haigh

**Renee** Anna Lindup

**Neville** Louis Mahoney

**Joe** Jeff Rawle

**Cora** Cleo Sylvestre

**Lucille** Gwen Taylor

**Hazel** Sue Wallace

**Ambrose** Simon Williams

STAFF

**Dr Valentine** Sacha Dhawan

**Sister Gilchris** t Deborah Findlay

**Salter** Peter Forbes

**Ramesh** Manish Gandhi

**Gerald** Richie Hart

**Nurse Pinkne** y Nicola Hughes

**Fletcher** Gary Wood

VISITORS

**Colin** Samuel Barnett

**Alex** Sam Bond

**Mrs Earnshaw** Rosie Ede

**Cliff** Nadine Higgin

**Andy** David Moorst

**Mr Earnshaw** Duncan Wisbey

Other parts played by members of the company

_Director_ Nicholas Hytner

_Designer_ Bob Crowley

_Choreographer_ Arlene Phillips

_Music_ George Fenton

_Lighting Designer_ Natasha Chivers

_Sound Designer_ Mike Walker

_Assistant Director_ Sean Linnen

_Associate Designer_ Jaimie Todd

_Assistant Choreographer_ Richard Roe

_Music Director_ Richie Hart

_Casting Director_ Toby Whale

_Costume Superviso_ r Lynette Mauro

_Hair, Wigs and Make-up_ Campbell Young Associates

_Props Supervisors_ Marcus Hall Props

# Characters

PATIENTS

**Mavis**

**Lucille**

**Hazel**

**Mary**

**Cora**

**Mrs Maudsley**

**Molly**

**Renee**

**Neville**

**Joe**

**Ambrose**

**Arthur**

STAFF

**Salter**
Chairman of the Hospital Trust

**Dr Valentine**

**Sister Gilchrist**

**Nurse Pinkney**

**Ramesh**
a junior doctor

**Fletcher**
a junior doctor

**Gerald**
physiotherapist

VISITORS

**Colin Colman**
Joe's son, management consultant

**Mrs Earnshaw**

**Mr Earnshaw**

**Andy**
work experience

**Alex**
documentary director

**Cliff**
cameraman

**Voice**

**Nurses, Healthcare Assistants, Social Workers etc.**

# ALLELUJAH!
# Part One

_A provincial hospital. Stage pretty bare._

MUSIC: 'Yours' (Vera Lynn).

_An old lady in a wheelchair, very decrepit but with a good voice, sings, accompanied on a cracked hospital piano, as behind her comes up a panorama of a Northern city – Morley, say, or Wakefield._

_A doctor at the side of the stage – Asian, thirty-five to forty – observes the old lady, Mrs Maudsley._

**Mrs Maudsley** It was my house.

_Sister Gilchrist now appears, tidies up the old lady and takes her off._

**Dr Valentine** Those with dementia can sometimes sing even when they cannot talk.

**Gilchrist** What is there to sing about?

**Valentine** They can even dance.

**Mrs Maudsley** It was my house.

**Pinkney** Dr Valentine. You're wanted on the ward.

_Valentine leaves as a youngish man, aged around thirty – Colin Colman – cycles into view, Lycra-clad and on a posh racing bike. Mobile in ear, he talks and rides without holding the handlebars._

**Colin** I'm here. Home. Yeah. What?

_He consults his wrist._

A hundred and ninety-eight miles.

No, coming up to it now.

In fact, some twat in an ambulance has just cut me up.

I _am_ hi-vis. Lycra from head to toe – you could see me from the fucking moon.

Sorry. It's just being back.

Oh, much as ever. The town. The hospital. And beyond the hospital, the distant moors.

No, not Muslims, you dick, _moors_. Heather, gorse. Jesus. No further word from on high? The Minister not minded to make up his mind yet? No?

Anyway, this is a private visit.

My dad, George. My ailing father, patient in the said threatened hospital.

Love? Sure, I'll give it him, George. Not that he's ever wanted mine.

Anyway. ( _About to ring off, he hears singing from the hospital._ ) Hear that, George? The ancestral anthems of the North.

_Colin pauses before cycling off down the hill at the back of the stage._

_In the hospital, a line of old people file on, singing 'Yours', and sit in a row of armchairs, shepherded by two nurses: Gilchrist and Pinkney. Gerald, the ward physio, is at the keyboards. When not playing for them, he is in constant attendance, working on their mobility. Valentine also present._

_A two-person camera crew film them coming on._

_The nurses arrange them into position, with Gilchrist occasionally inspecting the skirt of one of the women to check they haven't wet themselves and feeling the trousers of the men similarly._

**Lucille** Mr Jessop's gone.

**Hazel** Has he?

**Lucille** Went in the night, the way people do. Mind you, he was very obese.

**Pinkney** We shall miss him in the choir because he was a bass.

**Gilchrist** Maybe he was a bass because he was obese.

**Pinkney** One day, Sister Gilchrist, you'll learn to take this choir seriously.

_Possibly there is a withered balloon somewhere, which Valentine retrieves. Or a streamer reading: 'Save the Beth'. As the old people settle, the camera is positioned for their interview. Alex is the director, Cliff camera and sound._

**Alex** Hello, boys and girls. What I thought we might do is if you told me your name and a bit about yourself.

_Molly bangs a tin tray._

**Gilchrist** Molly. Give me your tray, there's a good girl.

_Molly clutches the tray and shakes her head._

Well, hug it, love. Don't bang it.

**Pinkney** Don't look at the camera, Neville, don't look. The camera is not here.

**Neville** I can see it.

**Pinkney** It's not here.

**Alex** Right. Who's first? What about you?

**Lucille** My father had a chain of confectioners.

**Pinkney** Say your name, Lucille.

**Lucille** Lucille. It's French.

**Alex** Are you French?

**Lucille** No. I'm from Morley.

**Alex** And why are you here?

**Lucille** Well, because I'm old.

**Mavis** We're all old. What's the matter with you besides?

**Lucille** I keep having these dizzy dos. By rights I should be a private patient.

**Mavis** What does it matter? Dead, we'll all be the same.

**Ambrose** Don't you believe it. Heaven'll be the same as Heathrow. There'll be a VIP Lounge.

**Alex** Now a man perhaps.

**Joe** I'm not so well either. My chest sounds like a sack of wet gravel. I'm on tablets.

**Neville** We're all on tablets.

**Joe** Did anybody ask you?

**Neville** Yes. He did.

**Joe** I was a miner and with the mining I got a bad chest. Black lung. That was before Mrs Thatcher put paid to the mines.

**Lucille** Don't start.

**Hazel** Did your father do vanilla slices?

**Lucille** I can't remember.

**Hazel** Not much of a confectioner if he didn't do vanilla slices. They think I've got an ulcer.

**Joe** It's all them vanilla slices.

What about you, Mr...?

**Ambrose** Hammersley. Ambrose Hammersley.

**Alex** What were you in life?

**Ambrose** In life, as you put it, I was a schoolmaster. Now in a wheelchair due to osteo-arthritis, and a fall. Legs gone.

**Hazel** I've got that a bit, too, arthritis. He's lovely. We're engaged.

**Ambrose** Take no notice. The lady is confused.

**Hazel** I push him sometimes.

**Ambrose** Bugger off.

**Lucille** Language!

**Ambrose** Don't 'language' me. I taught language.

**Lucille** You didn't teach that.

**Alex** Next?

**Gilchrist** You, Neville.

**Neville** No.

**Gilchrist** He's a bit shy, aren't you, Neville **?**

**Neville** No. Only I have that thing where you go up and down.

**Joe** Sex?

**Gilchrist** Bi-polar.

**Neville** I've been in and out of hospital all my life.

**Gilchrist** So who does that leave? Mavis?

**Mavis** ( _who is still doing her make-up_ ) I'm still

whitening the sepulchre.

**Gilchrist** Cora?

**Cora** Can I do mine later? That mince we had keeps rifting up. I feel a bit wanny.

**Pinkney** I'll get you a tablet, love.

**Mavis** I'm ready for my close-up.

**Lucille** Look out! She's got her eyelashes on.

**Gilchrist** This is Mavis. Who was a dancer.

**Alex** Whereabouts?

**Mavis** I travelled the world.

**Lucille** Gateshead mainly.

**Pinkney** Fratch, fratch, fratch. Now stop it, the pair of you. Cora, are you sure there's nothing you want to say?

**Cora** Well, the level of my Lucozade keeps going down. I think one of these is supping it.

**Lucille** Mavis. Tell the camera what you're in with.

**Mavis** I don't remember.

**Lucille** Piles. Haemorrhoids.

**Mavis** It never is. They don't know what I've got. I'm under observation.

**Pinkney** But we're all of us happy, aren't we?

**Ambrose** Pass.

**Pinkney** And where is it we don't want to go?

**Hazel** The lavatory?

**Pinkney** We don't want to go to Tadcaster.

**Joe** Why? It's got a grand brewery.

**Cliff** ( _to Valentine_ ) Maybe you should explain.

**Valentine** Should the Beth have to close, the geriatric wards would all be transferred to a custom-built facility at Tadcaster.

**Pinkney** And we don't want that, do we?

**Hazel** Don't we? Why?

**Pinkney** So. All together now. Save the Beth!

**All** Save the Beth!

_Gerald plays._

MUSIC: 'You Made Me Love You'.

_The old people sing from song sheets. A few seconds into the number, the music transforms, the hospital dissolves, and the old people rise from their chairs, throw their sticks away, and dance as if young again._

_By the end of the number, they are old again, in their chairs._

_Valentine takes Mary's hand. He often, when talking to his patients, strokes their arm – not offensively, but noticeably. As the old people leave:_

**Valentine** Oh Mary, they missed you out.

**Mary** Don't let on. I don't mind. I'm not used to saying much through working in a library. And everyone else has got so much off. No.

**Valentine** Are you sure?

**Mary** I'm sure.

_As Mary follows the rest of them offstage, Valentine turns to the camera crew._

**Valentine** Bed?

**Alex** Sure.

_Valentine now pushes an empty bed frame on to the stage. He is about to address the camera when there is a call for his services._

**Valentine** This is what the hospital is about.

_His pager goes off._

( _For the benefit of the camera._ ) Sorry! I'm wanted.

_At which point, Salter comes on, plainly relishing the camera. A smooth, urbane, well set-up figure who condescends to Valentine. He is in high spirits._

**Salter** No problem, Dr Valentine. I'll take over.

A bed. The secret of our success.

Something to die for. Something to die in, too, of course, but, always in short supply, what makes a good hospital is an available bed. It's what I'm confident will make the Minister come down in our favour. Because our figures are good. Very good. And one way or another, we always manage to find a bed.

_Then Colin cycles through._

**Salter** No cycling in the hospital precincts! Young man! ( _Sweetly. It is on camera after all._ ) No cycling! Where was I?

**Cliff** The bed.

_A lad of about seventeen comes on, pushing an empty wheelchair._

**Andy** William Wordsworth?

_Salter shakes his head and Andy retreats, but doesn't go off._

**Salter** A bed matters. Doctors make a difference, of course, but this is what counts. Is there a bed?

**Andy** Doctor. Doctor.

_Salter doesn't let him speak._

**Salter** William Wordsworth is Joan Collins. Keep up! ( _And points a finger in the direction._ )

**Andy** Got you.

**Salter** ( _calling after him_ ) And I am not a doctor. I am a lot of things but I am not a doctor.

**Andy** ( _to himself, going off_ ) Well you've got glasses on.

**Salter** ( _to the camera_ ) That young man, possibly born in this hospital because the Beth is nothing if not local, with its own maternity facility at one end of the scale and its geriatric wards at the other. Both ends of life catered for. Beth short for Bethlehem, so called when it was founded in the eighteenth century because, like the inn, nobody was turned away. Not quite the case today, but it is still what we want to do. And if we are allowed to. Our fate now hangs in the balance. At best – best! – there is a move to hive off our geriatric wards and move them to Tadcaster. At worst to shut down the hospital altogether. Is this much-loved establishment to close? We have had the Inquiry. We await the outcome. But we must keep up the pressure. Save the Beth!

_Valentine has returned._

**Alex** Cut. Lovely.

**Valentine** Did you want to be a doctor?

**Salter** ( _off-camera now_ ) Oh yes. I wanted to be a physician... Grave, judicious, reassuring. Doctors these days tend to come in shirtsleeves and pullover. Which is a pity. ( _For the camera._ ) Perhaps you should ask me what my function is.

**Alex** Go ahead.

**Valentine** What is your function Mr Salter, if you're not a doctor?

**Salter** For my sins I am the chairman of the Hospital Trust, though as many viewers will know, I've been a lot of other things besides, including Lord Mayor (twice!). Chairman is a grand title but I hope not a remote one and I'm often around – indeed patients have been known to wake up from the anaesthetic to find the sometime Lord Mayor pushing their bed back to the ward and thinking perhaps they've died and gone to heaven.

_Valentine's pager goes off and he leaves once again._

( _Off-camera._ ) This ( _i.e. Valentine's absence_ ) gives me a chance to say that I'm not sure how much you want to see of Valentine. Sister Gilchrist may be a better tip. He says he chose geriatrics because he likes old people – but nobody likes old people. Old people don't like old people (though don't put that in). A serious fellow, he's trying to write a book, as doctors tend to do (as if they haven't got enough on their plates). And don't let him start talking to you about medicine _._ ( _He mimes a yawn._ )

Ah, Valentine!

_Valentine ushers in a middle-aged couple, and Mrs Earnshaw's mother, Mrs Maudsley, who is in a wheelchair, and whom we have seen at the start, singing. Gilchrist and Pinkney in attendance._

I'll take this, Doctor.

**Gilchrist** Are you sure? They're filming it.

**Salter** Are they? Oh – ( _Mock surprise._ ) Still, it keeps my hand in.

Now, who're we admitting? ( _He takes her file._ ) Mrs Earnshaw.

**Valentine** No. Mrs Maudsley.

_Suddenly there is a disturbance._

**Ramesh** Coming through!

_A young doctor – Ramesh – rushes through, pushing a patient in a wheelchair, possibly with a nurse in tow, holding up the drip._

_Salter makes no comment on this incursion, but just gives a wide, inclusive smile._

**Salter** ( _to Valentine_ ) Have they been told about the camera?

_Valentine nods._

( _Mouthing._ ) Don't look at the camera.

Now, tell me about mother. ( _Stifling a yawn._ ) I'm interested. Had a fall. Got confused. We've managed to find her a bed on Shirley Bassey.

They are fortunate, are they not, Valentine, that there is still a ward for the bed to go on. Now, Mrs Earnshaw.

**Mrs Earnshaw** No. I'm Mrs Earnshaw. Mother is Mrs Maudsley.

**Mr Earnshaw** And I'm Mr Earnshaw.

**Salter** ( _very loudly_ ) Hello!

**Mrs Maudsley** It was my house.

_She begins to cry, this tempting the camera out._

_Salter ignores Mrs Maudsley as the camera laps up the tears_

**Earnshaw** She's confused.

**Salter** Quite so.

**Mrs Earnshaw** And she's got gallstones.

**Salter** Valentine?

**Valentine** Some routine questions. Is mother compos mentis? All there?

**Mrs Earnshaw** Oh yes. Catch her on a good day and she's as bright as a button.

**Mrs Maudsley** It was my house.

**Valentine** Is she mobile at all?

**Earnshaw** When it suits her.

**Gilchrist** Is she continent?

**Mrs Earnshaw** Oh yes.

_Earnshaw rolls his eyes._

**Salter** That's good news.

**Gilchrist** We have better things to do than empty bedpans.

**Valentine** Though needs must.

**Salter** Of course. Of course.

**Valentine** Appetite?

**Earnshaw** She eats like a navvy.

**Salter** At the Beth, we like patients to join in. Is Mrs Maudsley social at all?

**Mrs Earnshaw** Oh yes. Life and soul of the party. Aren't you, Mother? Life and soul of the party.

**Mrs Maudsley** Mine. They took it.

**Valentine** Religion?

**Mrs Maudsley** Thieves.

**Mrs Earnshaw** She was C of E but with all these vicars being had up she went over to atheism.

**Pinkney** Do you sing at all?

**Mrs Earnshaw** Sing? Sing? This is the Pudsey Nightingale. Sing, Mother

**Earnshaw** Oh hell.

_Mrs Maudsley sings a little._

MUSIC: 'I Can Give You the Starlight' (Ivor Novello).

**Pinkney** We love singing. We're having a concert next week for Sister Gilchrist. You can be our guest artist.

**Salter** ( _for the camera's benefit_ ) And away she goes, about to take her place in the therapeutic community.

_Pinkney wheels her away._

_Salter indicates the interview is at an end and Mrs Earnshaw gets up. Earnshaw doesn't._

_The following is out of earshot of the camera._

**Earnshaw** What's the survival rate?

**Salter** I'm sorry?

**Earnshaw** How long do they last?

**Salter** Well... that depends. This is a geriatric facility, after all...

**Mrs Earnshaw** He means generally speaking.

**Earnshaw** No, I don't.

Six years ago she made over the house.

**Mrs Earnshaw** Only because she wanted to.

**Earnshaw** In order to avoid estate duty.

**Mrs Earnshaw** Perfectly legally. The Queen Mother did it.

**Earnshaw** She put the house in our name and come September it will be ours free of tax...

**Salter** I'm familiar with the arrangement.

**Earnshaw** I told you. Everybody does it. Only what I want is reassurance that she's going to last those three months.

**Salter** This is a hospital. We make people... last... as long as possible. And once they've dealt with the gallstones she may be out quite soon.

**Mr Earnshaw** ( _as they are going out_ ) I don't think it is gallstones.

**Mrs Earnshaw** No, I don't either. I think it's you.

**Salter** ( _also going out but for the benefit of the camera_ ) Salt of the earth!

_Salter takes them out, leaving Valentine onstage, alone, but with the camera._

**Valentine** Ready? Now?

**Cliff** ( _camera_ ) Coast clear.

**Valentine** An extract from my book:

If all property is theft no one in here has any property. Unwaged, unpensioned, disendowed of their homes, all too often they are disendowed of the faculties that went with them. Loss of things means loss of bearings. So now, unanchored, they begin to drift, clinging to their lockers like Ahab to his coffin.

_Cliff gives Valentine the thumbs up and withdraws._

_Colin lazily cycles through as Gilchrist is taking care of Mrs Maudsley._

**Gilchrist** Don't let them catch you in here with that thing.

**Colin** Why? What'll they do?

**Gilchrist** Fine you, probably, same as they do in the car park. They're demons. Are you looking for somebody?

**Colin** Dusty Springfield.

**Gilchrist** In person?

**Colin** Mr Colman.

**Gilchrist** Joe?

**Colin** You know him?

**Gilchrist** He's not so good at the moment.

**Colin** They phoned. That's why I'm here.

**Gilchrist** Are you the son? The one who knows the Prime Minister?

**Colin** I don't know the Prime Minister. That's just my dad. Though I am attached to the Department of Health.

**Gilchrist** More than we are.

'Attached'. Joke.

**Colin** Yes. Ha ha.

**Gilchrist** Anyway, I'll be giving him a bath shortly. You're welcome to come.

**Colin** When you've finished.

**Gilchrist** We'll be in Fatima Whitbread.

_The old people are gathered. Pinkney and Gerald take them through a number._

MUSIC: 'A, You're Adorable'.

_Gerald goes to the hand sanitiser to ready himself for physio._

**Lucille** Where are you going, Mavis?

**Mavis** Gerald's going to do my back.

**Lucille** He never is. He's doing my leg.

**Gilchrist** Well, you're both wrong because he's doing my neck.

**Lucille** You're not a patient. That's incestuous.

**Gilchrist** It's a perk of the job. One of the few.

**Lucille** You want reporting, you. You shouldn't be doing that, Gerald.

**Gerald** Listen, I don't mind who I do. I'm anybody's.

_Much whooping._

**Hazel** Did you like that?

**Ambrose** ( _who as always has his earphones on_ ) Did I like what?

**Hazel** Us, singing.

**Ambrose** I didn't hear it.

**Hazel** I was singing it for you.

**Ambrose** I wouldn't bother.

**Hazel** You wouldn't say that if I was Dorothy Squires.

**Ambrose** On the contrary, I would say it if you were Kiri-Te-Fucking-Kanawa.

_Hazel maybe weeps._

Do you know what that is, Hazel?

**Hazel** Yes, disgusting.

**Ambrose** It's also a grammatical construction called tmesis. Abso-bloody-lutely would be another example.

_Valentine has come in._

You're privileged. Apart from me, Hazel, you are probably the only person in what was once the West Riding of Yorkshire who knows what tmesis is.

**Hazel** ( _faintly_ ) Hurray.

**Valentine** I'll push him back, Hazel.

**Pinkney** Hazel?

_He takes Hazel off._

**Valentine** You sound on good form.

**Ambrose** Yes. Ebbing. But still flowing Are you wanting to pick my brains again?

**Valentine** Do you mind?

**Ambrose** Nobody else thinks I have a brain to pick.

**Valentine** An enclitic?

**Ambrose** Fish 'n' chips. Rock 'n' roll. It's a connective. A shortened version of 'and'. Hairdressers like them for some reason. 'Cut 'n' dry', 'Curl up 'n' dye'.

**Valentine** And the other one was?

**Ambrose** Tmesis. Look it up.

**Valentine** I shall.

**Ambrose** This test. What is it?

**Valentine** Nothing. Just a proficiency test. Use of English, that sort of thing.

**Ambrose** By the hospital?

**Valentine** Possibly. It may never happen. People get hauled in now and again so it's as well to be prepared. I'm just hoping they may've forgotten me. It's not a problem.

**Ambrose** Oh, incidentally, one of my old pupils has promised to look me up...

**Valentine** I know. Don't worry. I'll alert them at Reception.

_He is pushing Ambrose off._

Mr Jessop died this morning.

**Ambrose** That's rather rude.

**Valentine** Why?

**Ambrose** Didn't he realise there's a queue?

_As they leave, Andy pushes on Joe in a wheelchair._

**Andy** There you are.

**Joe** And? Is that it?

**Andy** This is Fatima Whitbread. Somebody's supposed to come and wash you.

**Joe** Not you?

**Andy** No fear. I'm just work experience.

**Joe** Yesterday's lad had a cig. He passed the time of day. Gave me a drag.

**Andy** It's no smoking.

**Joe** So? Live a little. Your mind's not on this.

**Andy** On what?

**Joe** Experiencing work.

**Andy** It's boring.

**Joe** Well, that's one lesson you've learned. Work is boring. Tell me about your life.

**Andy** I'm young. I haven't had one yet.

**Joe** Well, you see, now that you bring it up, I have. I've met several members of the Royal Family for a start. Only the lower levels, I admit. The ones that are in the background when they're all on the balcony. And on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, in Batley of all places, I opened the door for Michael Parkinson, who thanked me personally.

Have you had sexual intercourse?

**Andy** Yeah. Loads of times.

**Joe** What do you reckon to it?

**Andy** It's alright.

**Joe** So do you want to feel my foot?

**Andy** Your foot? It wouldn't be top of my list.

**Joe** Not in a sexual way. Clinically. I've no feeling in it and I have to keep checking it's not returned. The lad yesterday was gearing up to do it, only then he had a call on his mobile.

**Andy** I bet he did.

**Joe** You could wear rubber gloves. In fact, I'd prefer it if you did.

**Andy** Listen. I couldn't feel your foot even if I wanted to. Health and Safety.

Talking of which, can you sign this?

_He gives Joe a form._

You have to sign to say I've been satisfactory. I have to have your signature or I can't go up to the next level.

**Joe** Well you haven't been, have you? Satisfactory.

**Andy** Just sign the fucker.

**Joe** 'Did the trainee attend to the requirements of the patient?' No, you bloody didn't.

On a scale of one to five. Excellent. Good. Average. Poor. Poooor. I'm an unsatisfied customer. And we're all customers now.

_Gilchrist comes in with her trolley. A Healthcare Assistant helps her transfer Joe from his chair to a bed._

( _To Gilchrist._ ) That's not me, that mark. I don't leave marks on the floor. Or anywhere else. It'll be a woman made that mark. Else a kiddy. I don't leave marks. When I've been in a place, there's no evidence I've ever been there. I want it writing down. I don't want it on my slate.

**Andy** I can't see no mark.

**Joe** Because you're not a professional. Someone with qualifications.

Talking of which, I'm one of the aristocracy here. I can wipe my own bottom. Can't I?

**Gilchrist** You can. Good morning, Joe.

**Joe** Don't 'good morning' me.

_Gilchrist is preparing the washing things when Colin comes in, still wheeling the bike._

**Colin** Hello, Dad.

**Joe** I'm not your dad.

You? My son? Got up like that? Come on.

**Colin** So who am I?

**Joe** That's your problem. Somebody they've sent round. Some joker. They must think I'm barmy.

**Gilchrist** Not good today, I'm afraid. He's got an infection.

**Joe** I never have.

**Gilchrist** How would you know?

**Andy** Nice bike.

**Colin** Do you want a go?

_Andy gets on the bike._

**Joe** My son works in London and he wasn't a bit like you.

**Andy** Hey, look: 'No cycling in the hospital precincts'.

**Joe** Not to put too fine a point on it, you look like a nancy.

**Colin** So is that a problem?

**Joe** Who for? Not for me. It might be a problem for you. Carry on claiming you're my son and looking like that and I'd belt you.

**Gilchrist** He's having a bad day.

**Colin** Dad, I'm your son

_Gilchrist pulls a screen round the bed._

**Gilchrist** I'm going to take your trousers off.

**Joe** Of course you are. That's what your sort always does.

**Andy** I'll go wait outside.

_He goes to the other side of the screen._

**Gilchrist** What are you? Work experience? Well, this is work. This is experience.

**Andy** I don't want to see his willy.

**Gilchrist** Nor do I, particularly.

**Joe** No danger. These days it's swelling the ranks of the unemployed.

**Gilchrist** You going to be a nurse?

**Andy** No fear. Computers.

I've given him my form but he won't sign it.

**Gilchrist** It's not important.

**Andy** I thought forms were important.

**Joe** They were important in the pit. Checking who'd come up and who hadn't – that was important. That's something else you've learned.

_Gilchrist continues the bed bath._

**Gilchrist** Could you help me?

_Colin is plainly reluctant and turns his head away so he doesn't see his dad's nakedness. Joe doesn't like it either, and he struggles._

**Joe** No, no. Get off me.

**Colin** Where's the tea place?

**Andy** Down the corridor.

**Colin** Do you want some?

**Joe** Not from you. I don't know you.

_Colin goes._

Hey. You, whatever your name is, you could have that bike. Nobody would know. Clear off with it. I wouldn't tell. And anyway I'm daft.

This one wouldn't say, would you?

Has anybody warned you about women?

**Andy** We've had talks about men.

**Joe** It's women you've got to watch. One stopped me the other day. Cracked on she was selling flags. Flags! She must have been sixty if she was a day. I said you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

_Gilchrist takes no notice of this monologue as she washes him._

Ow.

**Gilchrist** Sorry.

**Andy** He's rude.

**Gilchrist** He's old. He's on tablets. Take no notice.

**Joe** Mind you, this one likes me. Do you know why? Because I don't do it in my trousers. Isn't that so?

**Gilchrist** Well, it's not because of your qualities of mind or your occasionally malodorous feet.

**Joe** I'm very good in that respect.

**Gilchrist** The feet?

**Joe** No. The lav. That's why I've lasted so long.

_Gilchrist takes no notice as Colin returns._

**Colin** Out of order.

**Joe** Oh hello, Colin. Haven't seen you for a bit. To what do we owe the pleasure? I've just had a feller in here claiming he was you. A nancy. I said if he were my son I'd leather him. What must his mother feel?

**Colin** Maybe she doesn't care. Maybe she's dead.

**Joe** Have you bought me aught? Nothing? Not even a grape?

**Colin** I couldn't think of anything you'd want.

**Joe** A clean vest. When I was in once before, that's what your mam always brought. She was a good 'un.

What're you got up like that for?

**Colin** I came on my bike.

**Joe** Oh, this lad's got a bike. Where from?

**Colin** London.

**Joe** If you're a civil servant, why aren't you in a suit? I tell people you're chauffeur-driven.

**Colin** It's the Minister that's chauffeur-driven. And I'm not a civil servant.

**Gilchrist** ( _having finished_ ) Right. Done. Does that feel better?

**Joe** A bit.

**Gilchrist** So what do we say?

**Joe** We don't say anything. It's your job.

**Colin** Dad.

_Joe mutters something._

**Gilchrist** I didn't hear it. You don't say it, you don't get something else.

_She has taken out her iPhone._

**Joe** I am obliged to you, Sister Gilchrist, for washing me. We had showers in the pit. Not that you'd know that.

**Gilchrist** Good. Now...

**Joe** Not yet. I want the lav. Take me to the lav, please.

**Gilchrist** Do you want to take him?

**Colin** _No_. I don't.

**Andy** And I'm not.

**Joe** I can wipe my own bottom.

**Gilchrist** Yes, well we must be thankful for small mercies.

_She wheels him out, leaving Andy and Colin._

**Colin** So who are you, pushing my dad around? A trainee?

**Andy** No fear. Work experience. What do you do?

**Colin** I'm a management consultant.

**Andy** Like a civil servant?

**Colin** Better.

**Andy** Got up like that?

**Colin** I cycle. I've won races. You like it here?

**Andy** The hospital?

**Colin** The town.

**Andy** It's where I live. I've never been anywhere else. What's London like?

**Colin** Beats this.

**Andy** Clubs and that?

**Colin** Clubs. Food. Everything.

_Colin gives him a card._

If you find yourself down there, give me a call.

**Andy** You don't know me.

**Colin** No. Let's say you strike a chord.

_Gilchrist wheels Joe back in as Andy rides out on the bike._

I was born here. I know what it's like.

**Joe** Now for the floor show.

That's why we get on. I sing out.

**Gilchrist** You're a model.

**Joe** The doctor says I've got the prostate of a twenty-year-old.

**Gilchrist** Right.

_Gilchrist plugs her iPhone into some speakers. It plays dance music as she levers Joe out of his chair._

MUSIC: 'Love and Marriage'.

_He dances with her in a beautiful olde-tyme dancing way. As they dance –_

**Colin** He can't walk but he can dance still.

**Gilchrist** It happens.

**Joe** You're champion at this. Though it's old-fashioned.

**Gilchrist** That's why I like it.

**Joe** You were never tempted by disco?

**Gilchrist** With a chair at home? How?

**Joe** Pick of the partners here. Nobody dances like me. His mother never liked dancing.

**Colin** She didn't like you dancing. She liked you singing.

**Joe** He can sing, our Colin. Voice like an angel. Go on, sing.

_He collapses as the camera crew plus Salter appear._

**Salter** Sister Gilchrist.

**Gilchrist** Too late. You've just missed Lionel Blair.

**Salter** This is what we're looking for.

_Alex gives a thumbs up._

( _To camera._ ) This woman ( _i.e. Gilchrist_ ) does more for this hospital than its most dedicated surgeon. 'One of the old school,' people say. Do you know what I say? I say, 'Thank God for it.' We are fortunate in this hospital still to have our geriatric ward. Other keynote hospitals have long since hived them off. We cherish ours, as we cherish our Sister Gilchrist. ( _To Gilchrist._ ) Have you got a philosophy when it comes to old people?

**Gilchrist** No different from babies. The first priority is to keep them clean. And I don't mean clean as masked by air freshener... Pine Fragrance, Forest Glade... because you know that underneath there is the smell of urine – can I say that? – whereas I like my wards to smell of fresh air or smell of nothing at all.

Will that do?

**Salter** ( _to camera_ ) Outspoken, perhaps, but a treasure.

( _To Andy._ ) Oi. You.

_They move the bed._

( _Ushering out the camera crew._ ) Trust Sister Gilchrist.

Beds in apple pie order

Apple pie in apple pie order. No dribbles.

Joan Collins, Shirley Bassey, neat, sweet-smelling and above all clean.

_Colin and Joe are left._

_Awkward silence._

**Joe** Your Auntie Violet came last week.

**Colin** Yeah?

**Joe** Just put her head round the door.

**Colin** You should have taken her picture.

**Joe** What for?

**Colin** She died three years ago.

**Joe** You don't like this place, do you? They told me. London wants to close it down.

**Colin** Maybe.

**Joe** I tell you, it's a sight better than the care home – The Cedars. They were all barmy. Here it's only some of them. And it was only with my chest being bad that I got in here.

**Colin** They say you'll be a lot better, once this infection's cleared up.

**Joe** I don't want to be better. Better means back to the care home. I don't know why I had to be put anywhere.

**Colin** Dad. You've forgotten. After Mam died, you couldn't look after yourself. Else you wouldn't. You didn't wash. You didn't eat. You used to wander the streets.

**Joe** I used to wander the streets? You were the one who used to wander the fucking streets. It didn't get you put in a home. It ought to have got you arrested. It's what killed your mam.

**Colin** It never was. It was coping with you.

_Valentine approaches._

**Joe** Go away, you. You wouldn't understand this. This is father and son. Private.

**Valentine** Sorry. Sorry.

**Joe** Stuck in here with a load of old lasses. It's just lucky I'm easy to get on with.

Do you still do that?

**Colin** What?

**Joe** Go out on patrol. Walk the streets.

**Colin** No.

**Joe** Found what you were looking for?

_Pause._

I'd something to tell you.

_Pause._

Gone.

When I was in here years ago with appendicitis, I was on Mountbatten Ward. This time they put me on Dusty Springfield. So don't tell me there's been no progress. Oh, that's it.

That woman. The nurse. Gilchrist.

**Colin** She likes you... God knows why.

**Joe** I'll tell you why. It's because, when I want to go, I sing out. With her, it's a religion. ( _He becomes furtive._ ) I'll tell you something else an' all.

**Colin** Dad, if it's stuff about women, I don't want to know.

_Andy has come in, still on the bike._

**Joe** Listen, I was a tally man down the pit. I know about keeping tabs and I've watched her... You've got to keep on the right side of her and I'll tell you for why –

**Colin** Dad. I won't listen. You're poorly.

Can you take him back?

**Joe** No. I haven't finished.

**Colin** ( _calling after them_ ) I'll come in later on.

_Andy pushes Joe off past Valentine, who, seeing the coast is clear, now approaches._

**Valentine** Alright, Joe?

**Joe** Bugger off.

**Valentine** We haven't met.

**Colin** No. Colin Colman. ( _Peering at his name tag._ ) Doctor...

**Valentine** Valentine.

**Colin** Unusual name.

**Valentine** My actual name is Valiyaveetil. I changed it because nobody could pronounce it.

**Colin** When was that?

**Valentine** When they let me in.

**Colin** Lucky.

**Valentine** Why?

**Colin** Much harder these days. Still, you're doing a good job.

**Valentine** I hope so.

**Colin** Though I wouldn't have thought that geriatrics was overcrowded.

**Valentine** I like old people. Your father's very proud of you. My son the civil servant.

**Colin** News to me.

**Valentine** That's fathers.

**Colin** And I'm not a civil servant. I just work in Whitehall.

**Valentine** Any news re the closure?

**Colin** If there is, nobody has told me.

_Suddenly, there is uproar. Shouting. Valentine pushes Colin out of the way as a doctor, Fletcher, rushes through with a terrified patient in a wheelchair._

**Fletcher** Back. Back. Out of the fucking way.

Bed on Shirley Bassey! Bed on Shirley Bassey!

_He rushes the wheelchair across the stage and they disappear. Valentine is unperturbed._

**Valentine** One of the innovations that commended itself to your Minister and which we hope went in our favour at the Inquiry was that, here at the Beth, the placement of patients, finding a patient a bed, has, in routine cases, been made the responsibility of the individual doctors. Emergencies, of course, are rather different.

**Colin** That looked like an emergency.

**Valentine** No, no. And the doctors like it, the young ones particularly.

It was a brainwave of Mr Salter's and I gather they're thinking of wheeling it out for the whole of the NHS. Beds after all are our main problem.

**Colin** Tell me about it. And where would that bed be coming from?

**Valentine** Geriatrics. Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield.

There's been a death... And death means a bed.

**Colin** Which a larger establishment would probably have anyway.

**Valentine** Maybe, But patients love this hospital. It doesn't scare them as some hospitals do.

**Colin** It scares me. We don't like small.

**Valentine** We?

**Colin** People like me, who are trying to wrench the NHS on to a sensible footing. We don't like cosy.

**Valentine** Patients do. The cosy, the familiar. Same doctors, same faces. And on our wards in particular, if the doctor is familiar, and perhaps even more the nurse, then death may be less unfamiliar too.

**Colin** Cosy is lazy. Cosy means stagnation.

**Valentine** Not altogether. Are you familiar with the notion of peristalsis?

**Colin** I am not a doctor. I know nothing of medicine. Peri-what?

**Valentine** Peristalsis is the involuntary contraction and relaxation of the intestines, whereby the contents of the gut move through the body –

_He clenches and unclenches his hand in demonstration._

A hospital has its own peristalsis in the way that patients are admitted, are treated, recover and move on, or die and don't. Either way it's movement. Not stagnation.

**Colin** Except if the hospital is like a body and the patients move through, it's the geriatric wards in particular where patients are more likely to take their leave. Geriatrics is the arsehole of the hospital and patients are the shit.

**Valentine** So Whitehall seems to think.

**Colin** I am not Whitehall. I am an independent consultant.

_Fletcher comes through, with his patient still in the wheelchair, followed by Ramesh who has got the bed and is indeed pushing his patient in it._

**Fletcher** Fuck, fuck, fuck.

**Ramesh** ( _the winner_ ) Finger on the pulse, finger on the pulse.

_They go off._

_Salter comes in, a little flustered._

**Salter** Mr Colman, Mr Colman. Mervyn Salter, Chairman of the Trust. Sister Gilchrist put me in the picture. Can you forgive me? Welcome, welcome.

Valentine, do you know who this is?

**Valentine** Mr Colman's son?

**Salter** Yes, yes. Our own Mr Colman. But on the larger stage. A messenger from on high.

**Salter** Do you bring news?

**Colin** This is a private visit.

**Salter** Of course, of course. I understand, only I was hoping you were going to make us all very happy.

_Colin perhaps re-parks his bike._

( _To Valentine._ ) Why wasn't I told? But what is he wearing? I thought he was the window cleaner.

**Colin** I'm here to see my father. He hasn't been well.

**Salter** Well, of course. Otherwise he wouldn't be here.

**Valentine** Like many ex-miners Mr Colman is suffering from pneumoconiosis and currently has a bladder infection.

**Salter** Oh dear.

**Valentine** But with the right treatment we're hopeful he'll improve.

_Valentine leaves._

**Salter** Quite so.

**Valentine** Good to meet you.

**Salter** Be reassured, Mr Colman. Incidentally, we have splendid new parking facilities for bikes, did Valentine not tell you? CCTV supervision, everything. We don't want your precious metalwork to come to any harm. Did you come a long way?

**Colin** ( _as if it's obvious_ ) From London.

**Salter** From London! I hope you've been offered some tea. Sponsored, were you?

**Colin** No, just exercise.

**Salter** Because there's nothing you can tell me about sponsoring, not after our campaign. A new world to me. A revelation. No, a liberation. I surprised myself. Drag, woad, panto. All for the hospital, and these wards in particular.

Can you see me as Queen Victoria?

No, I couldn't. But that was only the beginning. Only everybody was doing it. Knitting, swimming, jogging. Sky-diving, moi! The community owes you a great deal.

**Colin** Not me.

**Salter** And me personally. Would you believe it, I used to be shy?

Whatever the outcome, this campaign has brought the whole town together. We need our geriatric wards. We need our hospital. Now it all depends on the Minister.

Did he seem pleased? Because he loved the choir. And the way we've renamed the wards.

**Colin** Oh yes. _He_ was over the moon.

**Salter** But you weren't?

**Colin** Mr Salter. The notion of a hospital catering for a community from birth to death is a sentimental one. It's the stuff of television. We do not need these birth-to-death emporiums. And I speak as one who was born here and whose father will, if it survives, die here.

**Salter** I don't remember you from the Inquiry.

**Colin** Fortunately for you, I was otherwise engaged, closing down a hospital in Hampshire.

**Salter** So where, in your view, are we going wrong?

We are well run. Efficient. We even make a profit. What else is there?

**Colin** Centres of excellence. Specialist units. What does this 'plucky little hospital' specialise in?

**Salter** It's not as if we haven't tried. We put in for a cancer centre but unfortunately Leeds had bagged that, and nothing else has quite the same glamour. Huddersfield had nabbed the kidney and Doncaster, of all places, the liver. Our only available option was dermatology, which nobody was keen on. So perforce, we had to concentrate on being lifelong – which we'd always been – and an all-purpose local hospital. Nursing. Patient care. What people want. And our figures are good. Ward for ward, we are up there with the flagship hospitals.

**Colin** Oh, I agree. Your figures are excellent.

**Salter** Did you not see all the awards in the foyer?

You shake your head?

**Colin** Small, badly run and in the red, it would undoubtedly close. Efficiently run and meeting its targets, it should close too, because, if it is profitable, why is it not in the private sector? We cannot afford hospitals like this.

**Salter** Not if we put the shutters up in Joan Collins and Dusty Springfield we can't.

Of course, it's always touch and go. No beating about the bush – old people are unpredictable. They can't always be relied on to throw in the towel to order. But we need them. Without these wards, we might not always meet out targets.

**Colin** Exactly. So they should go.

**Salter** You don't want us to meet our targets?

**Colin** Mr Salter, let me be plain. The State should not be seen to work. If the State is seen to work, we shall never be rid of it.

**Salter** I take it the Minister does not share your views?

**Colin** On the contrary, he originated them. Why do you think he's in the job?

**Salter** To reprieve the Beth would do him no harm. This is his constituency after all. His majority is, to say the least, precarious. Close it and I wouldn't vote for him.

**Colin** I am not privy to his thoughts but faced with the resistance of the entire community, sky-diving and such like antics, of course he may capitulate.

I have worked very hard to close this place down. I thought it was in the bag. If he caves in now, it will be heart-breaking.

**Salter** I sympathise.

_An eruption of old people singing and dancing._

MUSIC: 'Good Morning' (from _Singin' in the Rain_ ) _._

_The camera crew comes through and, trailing behind the singers, Mary, who is holding a drip stand. Mary sits in a chair, attended by Valentine._

**Mary** If you don't know the words, they tell you to la-la. I could la-la everything. My whole life could have been la-la.

_Salter takes a seat by Mary._

I could tell you something about that seat only I won't.

_Salter gets up again smartish._

**Colin** Why the filming?

**Salter** It's part of our campaign. A documentary to commemorate... to flag up, if you like, the survival of the hospital. We figured that the more publicity we had, the harder we would be to close.

**Colin** Quite.

**Salter** It'll be shown on Pennine People. Be assured it's only local.

**Colin** There is no such thing as local. The world is local.

**Valentine** They're also here to film the ceremony.

**Colin** What ceremony?

**Valentine** The presentation of the Bywater Medal to Sister Gilchrist.

**Salter** Twenty-five years' unblemished service.

**Valentine** Perhaps Mr Colman would do it?

**Salter** Oh. I was hoping that was going to be me.

**Valentine** Perhaps Mr Colman could even sing. The choir will be singing. Your father tells me you have a lovely voice.

**Colin** My father seems to have told you a good deal.

**Valentine** No. Only that you liked singing.

**Colin** I did. When I was a boy, he conned me into joining the colliery choir, doing fundraising.

**Salter** Were you a miner?

**Colin** No. I failed the oral. You should have asked the Minister.

**Salter** Why, does he sing?

**Colin** No, but he's a politician. He loves all that... presenting prizes, opening stuff... he'd cross London just to open a jam jar.

**Salter** Well you are speaking to an ex-mayor (twice over, did I say). I understand that. One is just happy to be of service.

_Colin cycles off, followed by Salter. Valentine is still with Mary, checks her blood pressure, holds her hand._

**Valentine** Mary, you could be a teenager.

**Mary** I thought when I was old I'd stop bothering what other folks thought. It's been the bane of my life has that. Doing what was expected of me. I was a librarian. I looked after my father. I thought when I was old I'd get my own way. Instead of which I got shingles.

**Valentine** Do you want a book? The trolley's about. I'm sure I can find you something.

**Mary** No. I can have my own way there at least. No more books.

_Colin is on his mobile, in a corridor._

**Colin** George. It's me.

Would you believe it, the fucking television's here.

God knows. Some local outfit.

No. Only don't let on to himself or he'll want to know why he wasn't invited.

Saw a nice-looking lad this morning, pushing my dad around. Longing to get away, you could tell. Me, fifteen years ago.

Incidentally, do you know what peristalsis means?

You do? I didn't.

Dad? Oh, he's alright.

Oh yes, that's the other thing. I had to help wash him, watch while the nurse bathed his bits.

Listen, twat face, you forget that I'm a working-class boy. Until today, I had never seen my dad's dick. Is that a rite of passage, seeing your dad's dick?

No.

Oh, average.

Yeah. Nothing to write home about. Not that I can imagine any circumstances in which my dad's dick would be something one would write home about.

Actually, I might come back. Now he's not going to peg out, I might as well.

No, I'll shove the bike on the train.

I'd forgotten how much I hate this place.

_Elsewhere Fletcher corners Gilchrist._

**Fletcher** What happened to the phone call? I thought we had an understanding.

**Gilchrist** It's not always predictable.

**Fletcher** There's not anything I'm neglecting?

**Gilchrist** Such as what?

**Fletcher** Chocolates. The occasional bottle. Flowers. I gather Ramesh bunches you from time to time.

**Gilchrist** Doesn't do him any good. They go straight in the bin.

**Fletcher** So what do I do?

_He puts his hand on her arm or her bum._

**Gilchrist** Not that. Just do your job.

**Fletcher** I'm trying to. A bit of advance warning wouldn't come amiss.

**Gilchrist** I don't know when they're going to go. I'm not God.

**Fletcher** God doesn't have targets. I'm three from the bottom.

**Gilchrist** Not my problem.

**Fletcher** Have you no weak spots?

**Gilchrist** ( _removing his hand again_ ) If I do, that's not one of them.

_All the old people are sitting round, Valentine busying himself with patients, and stroking their hands to reassure them. Gilchrist and Pinkney at work. Cliff and Alex filming._

Are you feeling more up to this now, Cora?

**Cora** I've got tummy ache still. I never thought I'd end up in a home.

**Gilchrist** You're not in a home. You're in hospital.

**Mavis** If she's not well enough, I can have another go. I've got lots to say.

**Lucille** And I have a wild side, which nobody has ever tapped.

**Mavis** Well you're leaving it a bit late.

**Cora** I've never done anything with my life. I've just been a housewife.

**Pinkney** Well that's not nothing. And isn't your son in Australia?

**Cora** He is.

**Pinkney** Well that's an achievement in itself.

**Cora** What I wanted to be was some sort of representative. Abroad preferably.

**Pinkney** What could you represent? What could she represent?

**Mavis** Cosmetics.

**Lucille** Cosmetics: why not reinforced concrete?

**Mavis** Don't be so daft. Concrete.

**Lucille** That's why, Mavis, you are behind the times. Us women can do anything now.

**Joe** Yes, and they can keep their mouths shut. I had ten men under me.

**Lucille** So did I on a good day.

**Joe** I want the lav again.

_One of the nurses wheels him away._

I wish I could stop going. I've got an arse like a sauce bottle top.

**Cliff** Cut.

**Neville** Cora, which is your bad ear?

**Cora** ( _tapping her knee_ ) This one.

**Neville** What sort of pain is it in your tummy? Is it just in the one place? Because I've had that.

And what was it?

**Neville** Nerves. It's always been nerves with me.

**Cora** They never tell you, do they? You'd think at this age you'd stop caring, only you don't.

**Neville** No.

_Valentine and Gilchrist leave, Valentine blowing them a kiss._

**Lucille** He's a bit touchy-feely, that Dr Valentine.

**Mavis** Is he? I'm used to that, I tend to bring it out in people. Mind you, I don't mind it. God knows nobody else is doing it.

**Lucille** He's no business holding your hand or stroking your arm. What's that about? After all, we're still women.

**Mavis** Only just. Dirty Gertie never lays a finger on you except to see if you've wet your knickers.

**Mary** Well...

**Mavis** What, Mary? Spit it out.

**Mary** It's not as if he's a vicar. They're supposed to touch you, doctors.

**Lucille** Only up to a point.

**Cora** He rubs my back sometimes, but it's only to fetch the wind up.

**Lucille** Well, fondling folks, I think he wants reporting.

**Gilchrist** Rosemary. Mrs Maudsley, admitted this morning...

**Pinkney** Yes? What did I do?

**Gilchrist** It's not what you did. It's what you didn't do. That's what you did. You're supposed to check.

**Pinkney** I was going to. Her daughter said there was no problem.

**Gilchrist** She would. She was sodden.

**Pinkney** She still has a lovely voice.

**Gilchrist** Rosemary. We aren't running a choral society. I am trying to run a dry ward. The singing is incidental.

**Pinkney** I'm sorry, Sister Gilchrist, but I want them to think that life still has something to offer... Singing, games, give them something to look forward to. Give them something else to look forward to.

**Gilchrist** Sat in wet clothes, what you look forward to is being dry.

Baking them birthday cakes, kissing and cuddling them... Maybe I was like that when I first started.

**Pinkney** Well, you have your favourites.

**Gilchrist** No. I have my unfavourites.

**Pinkney** And we all know who they are. On your list.

**Gilchrist** My lisr is just a nursing aid. If anybody has a little accident, I want telling.

**Pinkney** I thought you didn't believe in little accidents.

**Gilchrist** I don't. I believe in accident prevention. Catch them in time and you save on laundry bills.

_Maybe some of the old people start to sing softly._

**Pinkney** I love them all. Maybe we complement each other. The hard and the soft. Like policemen.

**Gilchrist** I don't know that giving them stuff to look forward to is doing them any favours.

Singing and what-not... It encourages them to think that life might still have something to offer beyond the next dollop of turkey mince. That there is a world beyond Angel Delight.

**Pinkney** I just wish we could have pets. Give them something to stroke, be responsible for. A cat maybe, but babies would be best. Old people love babies, and when they can't talk, they can still talk to babies.

**Gilchrist** Do you know what babies mean to me now? More shit.

_Pinkney rehearses a song with a group of the old people._

MUSIC: 'Sunny Side of the Street' (Louis Armstrong).

_Colin, now changed out of Lycra, but still with his bike, comes in to say goodbye to Joe._

**Colin** I'm glad to see you looking better.

**Joe** I don't want to look better. Look better, they boot you out.

**Colin** ( _looking at his phone_ ) I'm wanted in London. The Minister wants his hand holding.

**Joe** He's not one as well?

**Colin** Dad, it's a figure of speech.

Threat of a strike.

**Joe** Who by?

**Colin** Doctors.

**Joe** You see, I could help you there. I was a tally man. They want to ask me. I did all that.

Pickets. Colliery gates.

**Colin** Dad, you forget. I'm on the other side.

**Joe** Horses? Truncheons out?

**Colin** No such luck. Just sitting round a table.

**Joe** Holding hands.

He can sing, you know.

**Colin** I never can. Not now.

**Joe** You can. He sang in the colliery choir.

**Colin** You made me.

**Joe** He sang at concerts. He helped raise money.

**Colin** Only because you pretended it was a good cause.

**Pinkney** Well this is a good cause. Go on. Be a sport.

**Joe** Go on, kid. Do it for me. Do it for your mam.

_Colin sings._

MUSIC: 'Blow the Wind Southerly'.

_Joe then has a bad attack of coughing which Dr Valentine attends to. Then Gilchrist pulls Colin aside._

**Gilchrist** I'd like to run it like a real hospital.

**Colin** How do you mean?

**Gilchrist** To my mind having a choir is an admission of failure. Patients shouldn't stick around long enough to make up a choir. This isn't a home. It's a hospital. And in a real hospital, better, you'd be discharged. Here half of them have nowhere to be discharged to.

**Colin** The community?

**Gilchrist** Don't make me laugh. The council care homes are full and when the private ones aren't it's because they charge the earth.

**Colin** That's not really our baby.

**Gilchrist** Well, whose baby is it? It's got to be somebody's baby. I'd like to be a nurse, not a skivvy. Get folks well, old as they are, and send them out. Make the place work.

**Colin** I keep being told it does work.

**Gilchrist** Just.

You don't see the queues, the full wards, the beds blocked.

Nothing moves.

**Colin** It's a hospital. You can't just look at it in terms of through-put and turnover.

**Gilchrist** That's an admission coming from you. Are you having second thoughts? Two minds?

**Colin** Two minds went out with Mrs Thatcher.

Seeing my dad. I know how I ended up where I am. When I was a kid I had to be on their side. But how could I be when every fucking day it was drummed into me about Mrs T closing down the pits? And it didn't help that he was right she was lying. But God it was so dreary. So of course you're young and you go the other way. That's what he can't forgive.

**Ambrose** ( _speaking for the first time_ ) I wish you'd have been in my class. I could have put you straight, changed your mind.

**Gilchrist** Bit late now.

_Salter comes on._

**Salter** Mr Colman.

**Colin** I'm needed at the coalface.

**Salter** Off already? I'm glad I caught you.

**Colin** When it comes to the decision, you should remember that most politicians are cowards. Is that reassuring?

**Salter** It is.

However, if you're talking to the Minister, make sure you tell him that we've followed his advice renaming the wards and how grateful we are...

**Colin** Yes?

**Salter** Plus I'd count it a courtesy were you to emphasise how keenly one sympathises with his predicament and should he decide that closure is unavoidable one hopes that my experience and goodwill might be found useful in some other capacity. If you understand me.

**Colin** I think I do.

**Salter** Travel safely.

Settling in, Mrs Maudsley?

**Mrs Maudsley** It was my house!

**Salter** Quite so.

_Salter goes. Colin goes back to Joe._

**Colin** I'm off back to London, Dad.

**Joe** You've only just got here. There was something else. What was it?

**Colin** I'll miss my train.

_He tries to kiss his father._

**Joe** Gerroff.

**Colin** Dad, everybody kisses now.

**Joe** Not up here.

**Colin** It doesn't mean anything.

**Joe** So why do it?

Off you go. Mind on your bike.

_Alex and Cliff are filming. Gerald is attending to Mavis._

**Alex** Do you _like_ singing?

**Mavis** I do, but then I'm more artistic. You do, don't you, Mrs Maudsley?

**Mrs Maudsley** I've got something to tell you.

**Mavis** We know it was your house, love, but besides that, you liked singing.

**Mrs Maudsley** Did I?

**Mavis** You were the Pudsey Nightingale.

**Mrs Maudsley** It wasn't just Pudsey. I went all over, singing at different dos. I sang in... somewhere beginning with S...

**Joe** Stockholm?

**Mrs Maudsley** Stockport.

**Lucille** To be honest I don't much – like singing. Only it keeps her happy.

**Neville** Who?

**Lucille** Bouncing Betty. She thinks it takes your mind off things. Busy busy busy.

**Neville** Singing takes it out of me a bit.

**Joe** Tell you what would take it out of you. Hacking away with a pick and shovel half the day.

Singing, it's nowt.

_Molly starts banging her tray._

**Mavis** Get lost, Molly.

**Gerald** It's alright, Mavis.

**Mavis** He likes me, does Gerald.

**Lucille** I'm the one he likes. I'm his favourite.

**Alex** ( _to Cliff_ ) This is no good. It's all so fucking nice. What we need is dirt.

Do you remember when we did that pig farm thing for Anglia, where we thought the pigs were being fed hospital waste – and we kitted the two lads out with camcorders.

**Cliff** I've still got one. The thieving little sods nicked the other.

**Alex** It won't be Steadicam with this lot... ( _He mimes trembling with the camera._ ) Still, worth a try.

Look, boys and girls.

**Joe** We're not boys and girls.

**Alex** Quite right. Ladies and gentleman.

**Mavis** Oooh.

**Alex** Has anyone ever handled a camera?

**Mavis** Snaps? Of course.

**Lucille** I have. Our Joseph filmed me for a school project.

**Alex** But you've never done it?

**Lucille** I'm eighty-four.

**Mary** I have.

**Lucille** You? How?

**Mary** At the library. I often did it. Manuscripts and one thing and another. Camera just like that. I'm not just a pretty face.

**Cliff** Right, darling. You're on the team.

**Ambrose** Very Free Cinema.

**Cliff** Just keep your eyes open for anything that's funny.

**Mary** Funny ha-ha?

**Alex** More funny peculiar.

**Mary** Sex, you mean?

**Alex** No. Well, yes, if there is any.

**Mary** I don't want to get anyone into bother.

**Cliff** You won't, love. It's just for the film.

**Alex** All in aid of the hospital. ( _To Valentine._ ) Now, OK with you, Doctor, if we get them talking about their memories?

**Valentine** What sort of memories?

**Alex** Work, for a start.

**Valentine** Sure.

**Alex** Did you all go out to work?

**Hazel** I did.

**Cora** I didn't.

**Mary** You had to do.

**Hazel** I worked in Stylo shoe shop for a bit. Then Gallons and the Maypole. And I did a bit at Timothy White's before it changed hands.

**Alex** Then what?

**Hazel** I got married.

**Lucille** I live the high life. Many's the knicker I've had to retrieve from the chandelier in that house.

**Mavis** Where?

**Lucille** Leeds.

**Mavis** We're talking about work.

**Lucille** It was work. Men. Men. Men.

**Valentine** ( _embarrassed_ ) Who's got grandchildren?

**Cora** One of mine's a fully qualified market gardener.

**Mavis** Our Kirsty's a dental hygienist. She'd do my teeth only I don't have any.

**Lucille** I've got grandchildren only they never come near. One's called Emily, which used to be a right ordinary name only now it's more of an upmarket name. Joseph's the same. Our Eileen's got a Joseph. He's a right demon. That's the school's fault, I think. When I went to elementary school, they sat us down and made us learn.

**Alex** Learn what?

**Lucille** Poetry for a start. I used to know reams of poetry.

**Joe** I remember 'Eskimo Nell'.

**Lucille** That wasn't taught at school.

**Joe** We used to sing it in the bar at the Institute.

**Alex** What's the Institute?

**Joe** It was the club where we played snooker and whatnot.

Carpet warehouse now.

**Neville**

I wandered lonely as a cloud,

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils.

**Valentine** Very good, Neville.

**Neville** Ullswater that was. We once went up there on a mystery tour. It wasn't much. Give me Roundhay Park any day.

**Mary**

And thou most kind and gentle Death,

Waiting to hush our latest breath,

O praise Him! Alleluia!

Thou leadest home the child of God,

And Christ our Lord the way hath trod.

O praise Him! O praise Him!

_They all join in._

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

**Mavis** That doesn't count. That's a hymn.

**Valentine** Anything counts. It isn't a competition.

**Joe** Everything's a competition these days. Just ask my lad. Competition brings out the best in people. That's what Mrs Thatcher taught us apparently.

**Valentine** I've got a poem I like if I can find it.

_He looks through his notebook, which should have been seen earlier._

It's called 'Ten Types of Hospital Visitor'.

**Lucille** Ten? We're lucky if we get one.

**Valentine** It's by a poet called...

**Ambrose** Charles Causley. He once gave a talk at our school. Is he still with us?

**Valentine** I don't think so.

He talks about all the visitors you don't want to see, but this is the ideal visitor.

The sixth visitor says little,

Breathes reassurance,

Smiles securely.

Carries no black passport of grapes

And visa of chocolate. Has a clutch

Of clean washing.

Unobtrusively stows it

In the locker; searches out more.

Talks quietly to the Sister

Out of sight, out of earshot, of the patient.

Arrives punctually as a tide.

Does not stay the whole hour.

Even when she has gone

The patient seems to sense her there:

An upholding

Presence.

**Ambrose** What about the last verse?

**Valentine** I'm not sure we want it. Why? Do you know it?

**Ambrose** Yes, it's very short.

The tenth visitor

Is not usually named.

**Pinkney** Well I think that's morbid. We're better off singing.

_They sing._

MUSIC: 'Blow the Wind Southerly' (reprise).

**Fletcher** Do you know what I dream of?

**Ramesh** I never sleep.

**Fletcher** A bed.

**Ramesh** Who with?

**Fletcher** With nobody. An empty fucking bed. A vacancy. I haven't had a bonus in weeks. What's the secret?

**Ramesh** Charm?

**Fletcher** Bollocks. Who do you have to fuck? Because I know it's not Gilchrist.

**Ramesh** A smile knows no frontiers.

**Fletcher** I'm getting desperate. Currently, I have one patient in an ambulance in the long-stay car park, two in the corridor by the bins, and when we were really desperate last week I stashed somebody in the mortuary.

**Ramesh** Dead?

**Fletcher** No. It's called thinking outside the box.

**Ramesh** It's no good. We can't go on like this. We're going to have to widen our horizons.

**Fletcher** How?

**Ramesh** ( _and he's said this many times before_ ) The private sector.

**Fletcher** Where? Where?

_Stage dark, apart from the lights on the nurses' station. Gilchrist at the desk. Valentine, having done the ward round, is signing it off._

**Gilchrist** This is the time I like. When you've done the handover, been round with the trolley and they're all tucked up, clean and dry. Sometimes on a night, if you open the window, you can smell the moors.

**Valentine** None of that at Tadcaster. I'm told the windows don't even open.

Will you miss it?

**Gilchrist** Nursing? No. That's what people pretend is a vocation and it's just the place where they've ended up. No choice to it.

Dr Valentine. Can I show you something?

_She fishes out a piece of paper._

**Valentine** Sure.

**Gilchrist** It's only rough and the spelling's all over the place only it's what I thought I could say when they give me the medal.

**Valentine** Spelling doesn't matter... what's this?

_He shows it to her._

**Gilchrist** It's meant to be 'apprenticeship'. It doesn't seem stupid?

**Valentine** No, course it doesn't.

**Gilchrist** And I don't sound like a freak?

**Valentine** Sister Gilchrist...

**Gilchrist** You never call me Alma.

**Valentine** Nobody does. Can I?

**Gilchrist** You can if you want. Though not in front of the others.

**Valentine** Alma, you say you were no good at exams. You should have got help.

**Gilchrist** I'd have had to ask. I didn't want to be beholden. And I didn't want to let on. I don't want to be in anybody's pocket.

**Valentine** I can understand that.

**Gilchrist** You must have been good at exams.

**Valentine** The medical ones were alright.

**Gilchrist** Why, what other ones are there?

_Pause._

**Valentine** I thought they'd forgotten me, only now some question has arisen over my status.

**Gilchrist** Are you not a proper doctor?

**Valentine** Oh no. Not that status.

It's what they're supposed to do, employers... check up on... whether one has a right to be here.

**Gilchrist** Even if you're a doctor?

**Valentine** Even if you're Archbishop of York. My hearing's over at Pontefract. I haven't told anyone, though Ambrose has been helping me a bit without understanding why. We shall see.

_He pats her hand._

**Gilchrist** I hope when they give me this medal they won't ask me what lessons I've learned.

**Valentine** And if they do?

**Gilchrist** I would say that, if there was one lesson I've learned, it's don't leave it too late to die.

These did.

**Valentine** A doctor can't say that.

**Gilchrist** ( _she takes his hand_ ) Nurses can. Nurses do.

**Valentine** Have a quiet night.

_He goes. Gilchrist remains seated at the desk and there is silence, broken by..._

**Mrs Maudsley** ( _calling out_ ) It was my house. It was my house.

_Gilchrist stands up to see whose bed it is. She sits for a moment, before getting on the mobile._

**Gilchrist** Ramesh. It's me.

Just to put you on standby. We may lose somebody on Shirley Bassey. Try me later on.

**Mrs Maudsley** ( _calling out_ ) It was my house.

_Gilchrist takes something from her drawer. She hesitates with some sort of weighing-up going on._

_Then, priming it as she goes, she holds it up to the light so that we see it is a syringe._

_But what we also see is Mary holding her camcorder sneaking a shot of what is happening._

_End of Part One._

# Part Two

MUSIC: 'Good Golly, Miss Molly' (Little Richard).

_The old people – in a memory of their younger selves – perform a full-out song and dance. Then:_

_Mr and Mrs Earnshaw with Salter and Valentine._

**Earnshaw** Stay alive... That's all she had to do. Three months.

**Mrs Earnshaw** We should have kept her at home. I said.

**Earnshaw** It's a hospital. Keeping you alive is what they do. She's done it on purpose. She never liked me.

_The camera crew is trying to sneak in but is blocked by Salter._

**Salter** Sorry, sorry. Private grief. Private grief.

**Earnshaw** Come on in. Come on in. I don't mind.

**Salter** No, no. These are heartbroken people. We have a duty of care. Dr Valentine.

**Earnshaw** Why? Weeping? There's nothing you lot like better.

_But Valentine ushers the crew out, before coming back himself._

I want to know why.

**Salter** Death is a mystery.

It's the question loved ones so often ask: why?

**Earnshaw** Not – ( _Eyes up to heaven._ ) Why?

Why? ( _Jabbing his finger._ )

Why, as soon as you got your hands on her, did this old lass in relatively good nick suddenly peg out?

**Salter** Well, she had gallstones and of course she was incontinent...

**Earnshaw** Listen, Doctor. I don't know much about medicine, but even I know you don't die of wet knickers.

**Valentine** She _was_ eighty-eight.

**Earnshaw** That's no age nowadays. I read in the _Mail_ that eighty is the new sixty. I want a post-mortem.

**Salter** Dr Valentine signed the death certificate.

**Valentine** She slept away. Try to think of it as a blessing.

**Earnshaw** A blessing to her maybe. Not to us. We've lost money. Where's the blessing in that?

**Mrs Earnshaw** ( _weeping_ ) This was the Pudsey Nightingale.

**Earnshaw** Don't talk to me about the Pudsey Nightingale. I've never heard a nightingale, but if they are anything like your mother, I don't wonder they've become extinct.

**Salter** Who was on that night?

**Valentine** Alma. ( _Correcting himself._ ) Sister Gilchrist. She's a very experienced nurse.

**Salter** No one more so. She's up for the Bywater Medal

**Earnshaw** I don't care if she's up for the V fucking C. I want an inquiry.

**Mrs Earnshaw** We loved her

**Earnshaw** Love nothing. We want compensation.

_Enter Pinkney with a bag._

**Pinkney** We thought you might like the contents of Mother's locker. A bottle of Lucozade, half full. An opened packet of Quality Street...

**Mrs Earnshaw** And what's that?

**Pinkney** A tissue with some rhubarb crumble she'd saved from supper.

**Mrs Earnshaw** She used to do that a lot, squat food. Said you never knew where your next meal was coming from.

**Earnshaw** We can use the Quality Street. Though knowing her, there'll be no soft centres. She'd always wolf them down first go off.

**Mrs Earnshaw** I think we'd like to donate the Lucozade, wouldn't we?

**Earnshaw** It's cost us a fortune, this. It's cost us my retirement. Where were we going? Not Spain. Not Marbella. Colwyn Bay.

This is what you get for being modest in your aspirations. Robbed, that's what we've been. By an eighty-eight-year-old woman. It must be a record.

**Salter** I will show you out. Very often, I have to say, at this age there is no obvious cause of death

**Earnshaw** And if they do have a post-mortem, they won't find anything because I'll tell you what she died of... Spite.

_Pinkney comes after them._

**Pinkney** You forgot your Quality Street.

_Earnshaw shoves them viciously in his pocket as they go. The expelled camera has crept back._

**Cliff** Anything?

**Valentine** ( _to camera_ ) Ordinarily, it has to be said, rage at the death of a loved one of advanced age is happily rare, with relief more often the norm... The whole business these days coming under the name of closure... Closure to the guilt of not having visited or only staying half an hour when one does; closure to the boredom of talking to someone who is often incapable of talking back; closure to the boredom of having to talk to someone who is often disinclined to talk back. 'A blessing' is what relatives say. 'A happy release'... for everybody.

_Thumbs up from Cliff. The camera withdraws._

_Gilchrist has come on._

**Gilchrist** And closure, too, to the unpermitted thoughts.

**Valentine** What are those?

**Gilchrist** The uncaring thoughts. The real thoughts of a carer.

_Salter returns_.

**Salter** You do have the death certificate?

**Valentine** Of course.

**Salter** And cause of death?

**Valentine** Whatever fancy name we choose to give it – old age.

**Salter** Quite so.

If he does make a complaint, he hasn't got a hope. Particularly so as ultimately any complaint ends up with me. The buck stops here. One feels almost sorry for them. Though at this age, most relatives are grateful.

**Valentine** ( _drily_ ) They did donate the Lucozade.

**Salter** And post-mortems by request don't come cheap. These days they have to contribute.

Valentine, a word.

An entirely unrelated matter. I'm not in the slightest bit worried about this, but one of the ladies has seen fit not actually to complain but to suggest that you've been touching her... inappropriately, stroking her...

**Valentine** Stroking her what?

**Salter** No no. Not stroking her anything. Just... stroking her. Taking her hand. That sort of thing. Being affectionate.

**Valentine** And should I not?

**Salter** Oh no no. Of course you should. And some of the old biddies I'm sure appreciate it. After all they're not untouchables (sorry!) but what once upon a time would be called bedside manner these days borders on... interference.

**Valentine** I've been too loving?

**Salter** No–o. Though on another occasion you were seen to make an inappropriate gesture.

**Valentine** What sort of gesture?

**Salter** You... blew the old ladies a kiss.

**Valentine** That's forbidden?

**Salter** Just endeavour to be more detached. A whisker less affectionate. More... unfeeling. In a word, more professional.

**Valentine** Touching the patient has always seemed to me part of the treatment.

**Salter** Oh it is. It is. It's just a question of being less... well, remembering that you're a doctor, you can be less human.

Incidentally, we're in duty bound to enter this on your record, not that anything will happen. Just so that we're all of us in the clear.

**Valentine** Of course.

_Back on the geriatric ward._

**Hazel** ( _coming across Ambrose in his chair_ ) I like you, Gilbert. You're more refined. Do you want to go for a little ta-ta?

**Ambrose** My name's not Gilbert and no, I don't.

_He reaches for his earphones, but she puts them out of reach._

**Hazel** No. We're practising the art of conversation. They've put me in this cardigan. I said to them: tangerine's a common colour.

You've got lovely fingernails. Were you a dentist?

_Ambrose gets hold of his earphones and puts them on._

I thought she was going to be someone a bit more classy, that Pudsey Nightingale. 'It was my house.' I said, give over. I was awake when she went. Next thing you know they're fetching on the trolley. Exit the Pudsey Nightingale.

I've never heard a nightingale. Have you? You don't get them in industrial areas. I did hear a cuckoo once only that was over towards Harrogate where you could understand it.

_Ambrose has taken off the earphones in despair. Valentine comes on, and Ambrose wildly signals for help._

**Valentine** Hazel. You're wanted.

**Hazel** Me? Me and Gilbert were just having a nice little chat.

**Valentine** Pop along to Shirley Bassey. Do you know where that is?

**Hazel** Course. Shirley Bassey was Princess Margaret. I'm not barmy.

_She goes._

**Ambrose** One wonders how it is Hazel has managed to survive so long without being throttled.

I'm not barmy, am I?

**Valentine** No.

**Ambrose** Am I a joke?

**Valentine** Ambrose, you're old, that's all. Are you still expecting your visitor?

**Ambrose** Well, he hasn't been.

**Valentine** That's good though, isn't it? The important thing is to have something to look forward to.

**Ambrose** Yes. I wish I could just slip away like Mrs Maudsley. Only life has one in its jaws and it doesn't give one up without a struggle. They talk about the jaws of death. Well, it's not death that has jaws. It's life. And now, here comes pain with its gull's beak.

**Valentine** We'll get you a tablet.

_He wheels Ambrose away._

**Mavis** Has he ever mentioned a Mrs Ambrose?

**Lucille** Not to my knowledge.

**Mavis** That's sad.

**Lucille** Maybe he's not cut out for it.

**Mavis** What?

**Lucille** Marriage.

**Mavis** Course, when we first started, marriage was still the gateway to sexual intercourse.

**Lucille** Well, yes and no. I jumped the gun a bit. What was yours like?

**Mavis** Ellis?

He'd been well brought up.

He always asked first and said thank you afterwards.

Which is all you want really.

**Lucille** What did you call it?

**Mavis** We didn't call it anything.

We didn't talk about it.

**Lucille** We never talked about anything else. Except football. I had three husbands, all of them football mad.

I'd outlaw football.

**Mavis** With Ellis it was pigeons. Pigeons and model aeroplanes.

**Lucille** Pigeons. Football. Still, it was better than this.

_Andy wheels Joe into the ward._

**Andy** Here we are again. Fatima Whitbread.

**Joe** So. Have you worked out any more small talk?

_Andy shrugs._

Actually, never mind small talk, I'm busting for my bottle. Where is it?

**Andy** I'm not sure if I should be giving it to you.

**Joe** Why not? Give us it here.

**Andy** Health and Safety.

**Joe** I'm busting.

_Andy holds it out, then takes it back_

**Andy** What do you say?

**Joe** No, you little sod. Give us it here.

**Andy** A little word? Beg. Beg.

**Joe** Please, you rotten bugger.

_He gives him it and Joe pees._

**Andy** 'Thank you'?

**Joe** 'Thank you' my arse. You don't belong in a hospital, you. You ought to be in a Borstal.

**Andy** Borstal? I've got a GCSE.

**Joe** So what? Our Colin's got ten, not to mention the ones that come after.

**Andy** What?

**Joe** A-Levels. Four. Starred.

You must be sorry the mines have gone, you.

**Andy** Why?

**Joe** Because they let you in no questions asked. You, you're going nowhere. One won't get you far.

**Andy** They've done you in, though, haven't they?

**Joe** What?

**Andy** The mines.

**Joe** I was happy.

**Andy** And now you're an invalid.

I bet at your Colin's work they don't all pile into the baths like you did. He won't be scrubbing the Minister's back.

**Joe** He's scrubbing it already.

**Andy** He'd probably have been happier doing all that.

**Joe** All what?

**Andy** Showers and that.

**Joe** What's that supposed to mean?

**Andy** All that Lycra and stuff. That's what he likes. Is

that why he went off to London?

**Joe** ( _does some of this bring on his coughing?_ ) You dirty-minded little arsehole.

**Andy** 'Have a go on my bike.' We know what that means. He was trying it on.

**Joe** Our Colin? He never was. And if he was, it wouldn't be with you.

**Andy** Who would it be with? Another Mr Ten-A-Levels? He doesn't realise things have changed up here. There's gay clubs in Barnsley these days. That's where they scrub each other's backs now.

**Joe** Where is she?

**Andy** Who?

**Joe** That nurse. She was due to cut my toenails.

**Andy** You're an old fart, you. What're you doing in hospital? My grandad's not in hospital and he's older than you.

**Joe** I have a rare disease.

**Andy** Bollocks.

_He jigs the wheelchair about._

**Joe** Stop jogging me.

**Andy** Why, do you not like it?

_He does it more._

**Joe** I'm entitled to respect.

**Andy** You're old. You're entitled to fuck-all. Here.

_He gets the pee bottle and starts taunting him with it._

**Joe** Leave off. It's splashing me.

**Andy** Oh dear. I am sorry. I've spilled a bit. Butterfingers.

_He sloshes the contents of the bottle over Joe._

**Joe** Get off. Stop it, you rotten bugger.

**Andy** You're lucky it's your own, not mine.

**Joe** Help. Nurse!

_Pinkney comes in._

**Pinkney** What is it? What're you shouting about Joe?

**Joe** I'm all wet.

**Andy** If he'd said, I'd have taken him.

**Joe** This, it's not me. Honestly. It's him.

**Andy** Can I help?

**Pinkney** No, I'll see to him.

_Andy clears off._

**Joe** It was him, the blighter.

**Pinkney** I thought he was your friend.

**Joe** So did I. He poured it over me.

**Pinkney** Never.

**Joe** He was showing off. It was him. It wasn't me.

**Pinkney** You've only wet your 'jamas. It's not a tragedy.

**Joe** It is for me.

**Pinkney** Why?

**Joe** If it goes down on her list, I'm done for.

**Pinkney** Don't be so silly. Only I'll have to tell her.

**Joe** Why? You could just change me. Come on. Be sharp and she won't know.

_Pinkney is already on her mobile._

**Pinkney** It's Rosemary. Have you got a minute? Fatima Whitbread.

**Joe** No. No.

**Pinkney** She keeps a record. She has to know.

**Joe** Her list.

**Pinkney** It's part of her economy drive.

_Enter Gilchrist._

**Gilchrist** What is it?

**Pinkney** I'm afraid Joe's had a little accident.

**Joe** I never have.

**Gilchrist** Joe? This isn't like you.

**Pinkney** I thought I'd better tell you.

**Gilchrist** You did right. Dear me, Joe. I don't know. You're all the same in the end.

**Joe** It's not me, this. Honestly. It's him, the little monkey. He did it. The lying little sod. He poured it all over me.

**Gilchrist** And why would he do that?

**Joe** Out of devilment. It's the way they are when they're young.

**Pinkney** Andrew? No. He's got a GCSE.

**Gilchrist** I'm disappointed in you, Joe. You've spoiled your record.

And my dancing partner. I don't want a partner who wets himself.

**Pinkney** We'll get you some dry things. I'm sorry.

**Joe** Judas.

_Later. The ward. Night. Gilchrist, alone on stage, makes a phone call._

**Gilchrist** Ramesh. Don't get over-excited. We may have a bed coming up.

Tonight or first thing.

I'll be in touch.

MUSIC: a pre-echo of the waltz that Gilchrist and Joe will dance later.

_Two of the old ladies dance._

_Joe talks to his son on his mobile under the bedclothes._

**Joe** It's your dad.

Where do you think I am? I'm in bed. On the ward. Where are you?

A box? What kind of a box?

The opera? I didn't know you liked opera.

If you don't, why do you go?

You're with the Health Secretary? Does he like opera?

Well, why does he go then?

Who lends him the box? Pharmaceuticals? Do they like opera?

Speak up. What's all that going on?

_Tosca_?

No, I don't want to listen. You listen to me. I'm ringing to say goodbye.

I may not be here in the morning.

Why? Because I'm like a trophy. The longest-living patient. The King of the Jungle. I'm on her list. I thought she liked me.

Don't 'Dad' me.

Why have you got to go?

What big number?

She stabs him? What did he do? Wet himself?

What's it about?

Love.

I bet that's not cheap, a box.

Opera in the Minister's box. Goodbye, Colin. You've come a long way.

_Gilchrist in the ward with a mug of milk._

**Joe** Here you are, Alma, prowling the ward.

**Gilchrist** I don't prowl. I patrol.

Good news.

**Joe** Yes?

**Gilchrist** Your infection's cleared up.

**Joe** Why is that good news?

**Gilchrist** You're much better. You're eligible for discharge.

**Joe** When?

**Gilchrist** Tomorrow.

**Joe** Tomorrow? No. Where do I go? There's no room at The Cedars.

**Gilchrist** That's what I thought. Only you're in luck. Someone's died.

**Joe** He's the lucky one. It's a bin. I'm not going back there. I'm not.

**Gilchrist** Drink your milk.

**Joe** I liked us dancing.

**Gilchrist** Same here.

**Joe** Do you want a go now?

**Gilchrist** If we're quiet.

_They dance._

MUSIC: 'I Can Give You the Starlight' (Ivor Novello).

**Joe** ( _as they finish_ ) It's the last waltz.

**Gilchrist** Don't be so daft.

**Joe** I'll miss you getting your medal.

**Gilchrist** No.

**Joe** With going to The Cedars.

**Gilchrist** Oh yes. Well, never mind.

Aren't you going to drink your milk?

_He doesn't say anything._

Well, it's there if you want it.

Goodnight. God bless.

_The scene ends with him staring at the milk._

_Colin, Valentine, Salter and Gilchrist, the following day. Colin in suit and his office clothes, having plainly just arrived._

**Colin** I was sympathetic up to a point, but I was in the middle of an important meeting. I wasn't free to talk.

**Gilchrist** Your father said you were at the opera. _Tosca._

**Colin** Yes.

**Gilchrist** With the Health Secretary.

**Colin** We had things to discuss. The opera was incidental. What else did he say?

**Gilchrist** He was very proud, but he was upset you couldn't talk.

**Colin** I did talk.

**Gilchrist** I left him a cup of something. To settle him down.

**Colin** What sort of something?

**Gilchrist** Milk. Hot milk.

**Colin** He said he was going to die. He was on a list.

**Salter** I have to say, Mr Colman, such fantasies are not unusual.

**Valentine** And he had been ill. A chest infection. Which would make him vulnerable to quicker deterioration.

**Colin** He was in fear of his life.

**Salter** Patients often feel threatened, imagine that their belongings have been taken, for instance, the world a hostile place.

**Colin** Have there been other unexplained deaths?

**Salter** Valentine?

**Valentine** To die at eighty-six is hardly unexplained.

**Colin** What are the figures? How does the death rate compare with that in equivalent institutions?

_There is a silence._

Don't you know?

**Salter** Valentine?

**Valentine** I don't have the figures at my fingertips. Comparing like for like, I should be surprised if they were unusual.

**Colin** Any spike? Five minutes on the computer would tell you.

**Valentine** Supposing the figures were high, geriatrics is the end. People die.

**Gilchrist** And, the ward was immaculate. What relatives came to visit remarked on it.

**Salter** And no one ever complained.

**Valentine** No, though...

**Colin** Though what?

**Salter** What Valentine is referring to is a complaint, specious in my view, over a patient – Mrs Maudsley – her daughter and son-in-law having found themselves disadvantaged by Mrs Maudsley's decease and are seeking compensation from the hospital.

**Colin** Do you carry out post-mortems?

**Valentine** Not invariably.

**Colin** 'Not invariably'?

**Valentine** Not usually. These were patients in their eighties and nineties.

**Colin** So you keep saying. Who signed the death certificates?

**Salter** Dr Valentine, naturally.

**Valentine** It was a matter of course. Here, death is no stranger.

**Salter** Sister Gilchrist, have you anything to add?

**Gilchrist** I am not sure what is being suggested. That I was negligent?

**Valentine** Or that I was?

**Colin** I am not suggesting anything. Like any other grieving relative, I would just like some answers.

_Colin on the mobile to George as the old people assemble._

It's what I thought about this place from the start. It's too cosy.

They're having an inquest on this other old lass, Mrs Maudsley, but only because the family kicked up. If I want one I shall have to wait on that.

Course I do. Bring it on.

I know my father's dead, George. But on the plus side, none of this is going to do the hospital any good.

MUSIC: 'Sunny Side of the Street'.

_Mary approaches Cliff with the camcorder._

**Cliff** Hello, darling.

**Mary** She seemed right as rain. Still going on about her house. I don't want to get anybody into trouble.

**Ambrose** I do apologise but I'm afraid I can't be there at your presentation.

**Gilchrist** No problem. I wish I didn't have to be there myself.

**Ambrose** The truth is I'm expecting a visit from one of my old pupils. He's just got back from...

**Gilchrist** You don't want your bag emptying?

**Ambrose** Addis Ababa.

**Pinkney** ( _starts to wheel him into position_ ) Where did you say?

**Ambrose** Addis Ababa.

**Pinkney** Oh, he won't be coming now.

**Ambrose** Why? We don't know.

**Pinkney** Yes, we do. There's been a bus strike.

**Salter** Friends. Because we're all friends here. Some of you old friends.

_There is banging on the tray from Molly._

Thank you. ( _Meaning it to stop here, which it doesn't._ )

**Gilchrist** That's enough, Molly.

_Molly promptly stops._

**Salter** And if you're seeing this courtesy of _Pennine People_ , then you're likely to be a friend, too. One of the many thousands loyal to our much-loved hospital, and who have given us your support. We can all be truly proud of ourselves. I'm afraid, though, that there's no decision yet, so there's still the threat of Tadcaster.

**Hazel** Where's Tadcaster?

**Salter** It's not where it is. It's what it is. Big, modern and with a huge catchment area, some people say Tadcaster is the future and that we belong to yesterday already. Well, here at the Beth, cosy, friendly and above all local, we believe that yesterday is the new tomorrow.

Finally, an unexpected pleasure and a great honour for our hospital. Our longest-serving nurse is due to retire in a few weeks' time and, in recognition of her service, the Royal College has awarded her its Bywater Medal, which I am now delighted to present. Sister Gilchrist, our own Lady with the Lamp.

_Gilchrist steps up and he pins on the medal._

_Some applause, though one call of 'stab her' as he pins it on._

_Molly bangs her tray._

**Salter** That'll do, Mrs Ridsdale.

_She continues to bang._

**Gilchrist** Molly. Knock it off.

_She promptly stops._

**Salter** Sister Gilchrist.

**Gilchrist** I won't keep you long. Mrs Mathieson wants changing and we're waiting to do the drug round; Miss Proctor's cannula is leaking through its bandage; and I've all the paperwork to do with Mr Colman's unexpected departure this morning. You'll forgive me if I don't gloss over these mundane and possibly distasteful concerns, but they are the small change of a nurse's day. I have switched off my pager, or it would doubtless be reminding me that it's time for Mr Satterthwaite to take his prostate pill, and Mrs Hainsworth her Losec.

Nursing is thought to be a calling. To be a nurse one is expected to have a vocation. My vocation came about like this.

My mother was a widow. I was an only child. When I was thirteen, no older, my mother took to loaning me out, hiring me to be more exact, to anyone who needed help with a senile parent. Typically, it would be someone who said, 'We have to do everything for them.' When anyone says that, as I soon learned, it means they have to do one thing for them... clean them up, and this I did. Joyless though my life was, I was still doing it six years later when my mother went the same way and so became what one might call my client, and I her somewhat uncaring carer. Then she died, and I had to find a job.

It was only then that I realised that what I had regarded at best as distasteful and at worst as slavery was in fact my apprenticeship. And so I became a nurse. It was not easy. Nobody had told me that nursing meant passing examinations. Thanks to my mother I had missed much of my schooling so I wasn't much good at that. But I managed the basics, and via a care home graduated to geriatrics, where the finer skills are seldom required. I don't know who the other recipients of the Bywater Medal are, but I imagine they will have credits and diplomas galore. Not me. Because nursing is not my chosen vocation but just where I've landed up though it doesn't make me any less of a nurse... as this medal seems to acknowledge...

_Salter thinks she has finished and gets up._

**Salter** Thank you... sorry!

**Gilchrist**... It has not been easy but all I can say is that I have done what I could.

I shall wear my medal with pride, but it will be a reminder of what nursing used to be like. If I am an award-winner, it is because I am old-fashioned. I have comforted the afflicted. I have treated the sick and I have consoled the dying. Nursing, I have made room.

**Salter** Thank you, Sister Gilchrist. Outspoken as ever.

_The choir sings again._

MUSIC: 'Congratulations' (Cliff Richard).

_As they perform, Alex and Cliff are with Salter. They have a laptop. As Salter watches it, cross-fade to:_

_The camera crew, once more in evidence, this time focusing on Gilchrist. A voice interviewing her, but no light on the interviewer._

**Gilchrist** Not at all. I was actually looking forward to retirement and hanging up my Marigolds.

When I first started nursing, there was much talk of targets. Targets was the new and exciting idea that was going to galvanise the Health Service. Put in charge of old people, I found it hard to see what targets there could be. And nobody told me.

On any other ward, the target was recovery and discharge. But here if there was recovery there was often no discharge. So there was just one target and that was death.

**Voice** And you helped them achieve that?

**Gilchrist** A more rapid turnover on the ward seemed to suit everybody. And I mean everybody.

The doctors, for obvious reasons, the loved ones, socalled, who seldom visited, and when mother or father died, the relatives seemed glad to be relieved of the obligation.

**Voice** You say everybody seemed pleased. Does that include the patients?

**Gilchrist** I was a facilitator, self-appointed, I agree, and in any other profession – and nursing is a profession if it is allowed to be – in any other profession, I would be called a progress-chaser.

**Voice** Did nobody ask?

**Gilchrist** I am not a doctor. I am a woman. I'm a nurse. Nobody was interested.

**Voice** Was it just random?

**Gilchrist** Certainly not, I'm a professional. I didn't just pick on anybody. There had to be a criterion. What makes most work on wards like these is incontinence. I had a list, and as soon as anybody started to soil themselves, they went on it.

**Voice** Was that where you drew the line? Nobody ever asked?

**Gilchrist** Not until Mrs Maudsley.

**Voice** You were fond of Mr Colman?

**Gilchrist** Well, normally he was clean. I kept a record. I have a notebook somewhere.

**Voice** Yes. We have it.

**Gilchrist** I felt I was making a contribution.

**Voice** By killing old people?

**Gilchrist** By helping them to die. Clearing the decks.

**Voice** It's no less murder for being a metaphor.

You say life was a burden to them. Do you think this is what they would have chosen?

**Gilchrist** How should they choose between life and death? Most of them can't even choose between mince and macaroni.

**Voice** We'll take a break there. Interview suspended at 15.35 p.m.

It's only fair to say that you're looking at a very long sentence: life, and with no one to commute it as you so kindly did theirs.

_Another interview comes into focus on the other side of the stage: Valentine's hearing._

**Voice** You're in the news. This nurse. Did you know her?

**Valentine** Of course.

**Voice** And you never twigged?

**Valentine** It's hardly what one expects.

**Voice** You don't have a suspicious mind. Whereas I do. It's what I'm paid for.

I see you had a student visa but stayed on. Well, at least you didn't come in with a truckload of oranges.

So, what makes you think you would be an asset to this country?

**Valentine** I am a doctor.

**Voice** Besides that. We have doctors of our own. You must remember that in England there's not an infinite amount of room. On a Saturday afternoon you can't move, even in Pontefract. Anything else?

**Valentine** I work with old people.

**Voice** It's true there's no shortage of those. Mostly white, I take it?

**Valentine** Why do you say that?

**Voice** The point I'm making is that being less advanced than we are, you tend to keep your own old people at home. Now, the questions.

I won't insult you by asking who won the 1966 World Cup, but I see that the hospital where you work has a choir.

**Valentine** It has.

**Voice** Are you in the choir?

**Valentine** I sometimes help out.

**Voice** Well then, you won't mind, just as a formality, if we ask you to sing something. 'Land of Hope and Glory'. Do you want the words?

**Valentine** No.

**Voice** That's good.

**Valentine** ( _sings_ )

Land of Hope and Glory,

Mother of the Free,

How shall we extol thee,

Who were born...

_He stops._

Actually, I can't.

**Voice** Oh, I was rather enjoying it.

**Valentine** I've never liked it. Even Elgar hated it.

**Voice** What's he got to do with it?

**Valentine** He wrote the music.

**Voice** But it's not the music you're objecting to, is it? A pity. You were doing so well.

**Valentine** I'm auditioning to be English. What you're wanting is a Brit.

**Voice** Good morning, Dr Valentine. Nice try.

_Pause._

Oh, and when the time comes, I'd have my bags packed. They tend to call early in the day.

_Colin and Salter watching the titles sequence of the documentary._

_On the monitor: the opening ninety- second title sequence of their now complete documentary –_ WHEN CARERS KILL: DEATH AT THE BETH _, a prime-time special. Cut fast, to music with commentary or captions putting together the highlights of the story:_

_Salter saying nobody likes old people._

_Valentine holding Lucille's hand._

_Gilchrist in full kit._

_Choir singing, plus the Pudsey Nightingale._

_Death of Mrs Maudlsey._

_Award of the Bywater Medal._

_Salter reading a statement outside the hospital._

_Gilchrist escorted to a prison van with screaming crowd._

**Salter** You ask me if I knew. I reproach myself now, but to be honest, I knew and I didn't know, which is often the case when circumstances not of one's choosing contrive to work to one's advantage.

**Colin** I have mixed feelings. I grieve for my father, naturally. But I'm not sorry about the closure, though it was none of my doing. And there is a lesson here. It is that one person with conviction and a degree of self-regard can even by accident defeat the entirely worthy efforts of all the rest. Forget the beds trundled up Penyghent, the urologists abseiling down Gaping Ghyll and the midwives plunging across Morecambe Bay, all go for nothing when one person with an agenda of their own wills it otherwise. Democracy nothing. Will, that is what matters. What carries the day is will.

**Salter** Yours or hers?

**Colin** Will and chance. Never mind how many patients she saw off, she certainly killed the hospital.

_The patients file on_ ( _in their outdoor clothes?_ ) _ready to go to Tadcaster, now accompanied by Pinkney, Gerald, Fletcher and Ramesh._

**Lucille** You've got yourself dolled up.

**Mavis** Well, we're off to Tadcaster.

**Hazel** ( _pushing Ambrose's wheelchair_ ) We're looking forward to it, aren't we, Gilbert?

**Ambrose** 'We', Hazel? 'We'? You and I do not belong together even in the same personal pronoun.

**Hazel** Well we might at Tadcaster.

**Pinkney** You won't know you're born. There'll be WiFi, and you'll be able to Skype your loved ones on a daily basis. Skype! Skype!

**Neville** The other one was a villain. Now this one's taken leave of her senses.

**Pinkney** Trust me. Tadcaster will be heaven. ( _To Ramesh and Fletcher._ ) Are you coming?

**Ramesh** No.

**Fletcher** No fear. There's a posh clinic just starting.

**Pinkney** Where?

**Ramesh** The in-place.

**Pinkney** Dubai?

**Fletcher** _Hull!_

**Mary** Tadcaster's a bit far for folks to come, visitors.

**Cora** Well they never do come.

**Mary** Yes, only now they'll have an excuse.

**Ambrose** Are you not coming?

**Valentine** To Tadcaster? I'm not asked. Having presented my furtive self for examination and been found wanting, I shan't be available. Besides, I've been told I'm too hands-on.

_He takes Ambrose's hand._

**Ambrose** I shall miss you. You've saved my life.

**Valentine** No.

**Ambrose** No. You're right. Nobody saves anyone's life. Just postpones their death.

**Valentine** That's the spirit.

_Valentine pats him reassuringly._

**Valentine** He'll come.

**Ambrose** Oh yes. In some shape or form.

_Valentine turns front._

**Valentine** Nurse Pinkney was right when she said Tadcaster was going to be heaven. Only she never got to be an angel there, a casualty of the downsizing that privatisation inevitably involves.

Still, with the nurses largely from the Philippines, where they are brought up to treat the old with more respect, there were no complaints from the patients.

_Who now go off, singing._

MUSIC: 'Side by Side' (Dean Martin).

_Salter and Colin in separate spots._

**Salter** Though I managed to snap up the hospital buildings for one of my property companies, I was hoping for some appropriate recognition of my services in the form of a knighthood. Thanks to Sister Gilchrist, all I've ended up with is a measly CBE. However, after some well-placed philanthropy, at our local university I managed my heart's desire in the form of an honorary degree. So now I am at last Doctor Salter.

_And perhaps we see him in his academic robes._

**Colin** Salter notwithstanding, the sale represents a healthy capital gain for NHS funding, the hospital having reinvented itself as a boutique hotel, with, in a graceful acknowledgement of its previous existence, the principal suites named after Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell. For the moment, its best-known nurse remains uncommemorated, though a play about her is threatened at the local theatre.

**Valentine** I see Alma, as I'm now permitted to call her, from time to time. It's a place in the wilds of Lincolnshire.

_In the prison garden._

**Gilchrist** I'm not unhappy.

I share a garden which I've never had. I prefer plants that grow in the shade. And I paint. All that. I'm still a celebrity only it's wearing off. I don't imagine I will ever be released. Though in case it would help I was advised to say sorry. Show some remorse.

**Valentine** And did you?

**Gilchrist** I did... but no one believes me.

And they're quite right... I took... a short cut... several... I can see that. But if people love their parents why do they put them away?

**Valentine** Are you asking me?

**Gilchrist** No. That's what I asked them. They said it wasn't remorse.

Only it's honest.

_She takes his hand._

Will you come again?

**Valentine** How can I? I am forbidden these shores.

**Gilchrist** Will you write?

**Valentine** ( _turning out front_ ) It was a difficult conversation and in one of the many pauses, for want of anything better, I said –

( _Turning back to her_ ) When I was doing my training, before I plumped for geriatrics, I was very keen on surgery. Through observing and even participating in colorectal surgery, I was struck by something extraordinary, namely that the flesh of the bowel of mature and even aged patients was no different from that of the flesh of a child or a young person. Unique among every department of the body, the bowel does not seem to age. So these ancient and faltering persons, carry within their venerable bodies a remnant of their infant selves, part of them still young and ageless.

Why? Solve that and you would undoubtedly get the Nobel Prize.

So you see, Alma, nobody can be quite written off, even the Pudsey Nightingale.

**Gilchrist** Perhaps.

_She continues to garden. Valentine turns front again._

**Valentine** Well, at least she has her place, even if that place is prison. Me, I have no place.

Come unto these yellow sands and there take hands. Only not mine, and so, unwelcome on these grudging shores, I must leave the burden of being English to others and become what I have always felt, a displaced person.

Why, I ask myself, should I still want to join? What is there for me here, where education is a privilege and nationality a boast? Starving the sick and neglecting the old, what makes you special still? There is nobody to touch you, but who wants to any more? Open your arms before it's too late.

In the meantime, though I cannot be English, I remain a doctor, if only in places where nobody asks questions... a doctor on a cruise ship for instance where, who knows, I might even meet somebody and have a shipboard romance.

So when you next go on a cruise to the Adriatic or the Greek Islands and get that nasty tummy bug, take another look at the ship's doctor.

It might be me.

_He smiles._

# About the Author

Alan Bennett has been one of our leading dramatists since the success of _Beyond the Fringe_ in the 1960s. His television series _Talking Heads_ has become a modern-day classic, as have many of his works for stage including _Forty Years On_ , _The Lady in the Van_ , _A Question of_ _Attribution_ , _The Madness of George III_ (together with the Oscar-nominated screenplay _The Madness of King_ _George_ ) and an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's _The_ _Wind in the Willows._ At the National Theatre, London, _The History Boys_ won numerous awards including _Evening Standard_ and Critics' Circle awards for Best Play, an Olivier for Best New Play and the South Bank Award. On Broadway, _The History Boys_ won five New York Drama Desk Awards, four Outer Critics' Circle Awards, a New York Drama Critics' Award, a New York Drama League Award and six Tonys. _The Habit of Art_ opened at the National in 2009 and _People_ in 2012, together with two short plays, _Hymn_ and _Cocktail Sticks_.

His latest collection of prose, _Keeping On Keeping On_ , was published in 2016. Of his two previous collections, _Writing Home_ was a number-one bestseller and _Untold_ _Stories_ won the PEN/Ackerley Prize for autobiography, 2006. Bennett's _Six Poets, Hardy to Larkin: an_ _Anthology_ , was published in 2014. His fiction includes _The Uncommon Reader_ and _Smut: Two Unseemly_ _Stories_.

# By the Same Author

PLAYS ONE

( _Forty Years On_ , _Getting On_ , _Habeas Corpus_ , _Enjoy_ )

PLAYS TWO

( _Kafka's Dick_ , _The Insurance Man_ , _The Old Country_ , _An Englishman Abroad_ , _A Question of Attribution_ )

THE LADY IN THE VAN
OFFICE SUITE
THE MADNESS OF GEORGE III
THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
THE HISTORY BOYS
THE HABIT OF ART
PEOPLE
HYMN _and_ COCKTAIL STICKS

_television plays_

ME, I'M AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF

( _A Day Out_ , _Sunset Across the Bay_ , _A Visit from Miss Prothero_ , _Me, I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf_ , _Green Forms_ , _The Old Crowd_ , _Afternoon Off_ )

ROLLING HOME

( _One Fine Day_ , _All Day on the Sands_ , _Our Winnie_ , _Rolling Home_ , _Marks_ , _Say Something Happened_ , _Intensive Care_ )

TALKING HEADS

_screenplays_

A PRIVATE FUNCTION

( _The Old Crowd_ , _A Private Function_ , _Prick Up Your Ears_ , 102 _Boulevard Haussmann_ , _The Madness of King George_ )

THE HISTORY BOYS: THE FILM

_autobiography_

THE LADY IN THE VAN
WRITING HOME
UNTOLD STORIES
A LIFE LIKE OTHER PEOPLE'S

_fiction_

THREE STORIES

( _The Laying on of Hands, The Clothes They Stood Up In, Father! Father! Burning Bright_ )

THE UNCOMMON READER
SMUT: TWO UNSEEMLY STORIES

# Musical Numbers

'Yours'

(music Gonzalo Roig, lyrics Albert Gamse and Jack Sherr)

'You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It) (music James V. Monaco, lyrics Joseph McCarthy)

'A, You're Adorable'

(music Sid Lippmann, lyrics Buddy Kaye and Fred Wise, arranged by George Fenton)

'Love and Marriage'

(music Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics Sammy Cahn, arranged by Nelson Riddle, sung by Frank Sinatra)

'Good Morning'

(music Nacio Herb Brown, lyrics Arthur Freed, arranged by George Fenton)

'Blow the Wind Southerly'

(traditional, arranged by George Fenton)

'Good Golly, Miss Molly

(music and lyrics John Marascalco and Robert "Bumps" Blackwell, sung by Little Richard)

'On the Sunny Side of the Street'

(music Jimmy McHugh, lyrics Dorothy Fields, arranged by George Fenton)

'I Can Give You the Starlight'

(music and lyrics Ivor Novello, arranged by George Fenton, sung by Gary Wood)

'Congratulations'

(music and lyrics Bill Martin and Phil Coulter, arranged by George Fenton)

'Side by Side'

(music and lyrics Harry M. Woods, arranged by George Fenton)

'Get Happy'

(music Harold Arlen, lyrics Ted Koehler, arranged by George Fenton)

# Copyright

First published in 2018
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA

This ebook edition first published in 2018

All rights reserved
© Forelake Ltd, 2018

The right of Alan Bennett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

'Ten Types of Hospital Visitor' © Charles Causley, from _Collected Poems 1951-2000_ (Macmillan), reproduced by permission of David Higham Associates Limited

All rights whatsoever in this work are strictly reserved. Applications for permission for any use whatsoever including performance rights must be made in advance, prior to any such proposed use, to United Agents LLP, 12–62 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LE. No performance may be given unless a licence has first been obtained.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN 978–0–571–34986–9

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook