A Fortunate Man. John Berger

other girls had sat there crying because they thought they were pregnant. To make it easier for her, the doctor slipped the question between several others.

      ‘What’s getting you down?’

      No answer.

      ‘Sore throat?’

      ‘Not now.’

      ‘Water-works all right?’

      She nodded.

      ‘Have you got a temperature?’

      She shook her head.

      ‘Periods regular?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘When was your last one?’

      ‘Last week.’

      The doctor paused.

      ‘Do you remember that rash you used to get on your tum? Has it ever come back?’

      ‘No.’

      He leant forward in his chair towards her.

      ‘You just feel weepy?’

      She inclined her head farther towards her own consoling bosom.

      ‘Did Mum and Dad put you up to come to me?’

      ‘No, I came myself.’

      ‘Even having your hair dyed didn’t make you feel better?’

      She laughed a little because he had noticed. ‘It did for a while.’

      The doctor took her temperature, looked at her throat and told her to stay in bed for two days. Then he resumed the conversation.

      ‘Do you like working in that laundry?’

      ‘It’s a job.’

      ‘What about the other girls there?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘Do you get on with them?’

      ‘You get stopped if they find you talking.’

      ‘Have you thought of doing anything else?’

      ‘What can I do?’

      ‘What would you like to do?’

      ‘I’d like to do secretarial work.’

      ‘Who would you like to be secretary to?’

      She laughed and shook her head.

      Her face was grubby with tear stains. But around her eyes and in the muzzle of her face which terminates in her full lip-sticked lips there is evidence of the same force that has filled out her bust and her hips. She is nubile in everything except her education and her chances.

      ‘When you’re a bit better I’ll keep you off work for a few days, if you like, and you can go to the Labour Exchange and find out how you can get trained. There are all kinds of training schemes.’

      ‘Are there?’ she said moonily.

      ‘How did you do at school?’

      ‘I wasn’t any good.’

      ‘Did you take O-levels?’

      ‘No. I left.’

      ‘But you weren’t stupid were you?’ He asked this as though if she admitted that she was, it would somehow reflect badly on him.

      ‘No, not stupid.’

      ‘Well,’ he said.

      ‘It’s terrible that laundry. I hate it.’

      ‘It’s no good being sorry for yourself. If I give you a week off, will you really use it?’

      She nodded, chewing her damp handkerchief.

      ‘You can come up again on Wednesday and I’ll phone the Labour Exchange and we’ll talk about what they say.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, beginning to cry again.

      ‘Don’t be sorry. The fact that you’re crying means you’ve got imagination. If you didn’t have imagination, you wouldn’t feel so bad. Now go to bed and stay there tomorrow.’

      Through the surgery window he saw her walking up the lane to the common, to the house in which he had delivered her sixteen years ago. After she had turned the corner, he continued to stare at the stone walls on either side of the lane. Once they were dry walls. Now their stones were cemented together.

      He had heard rumours about them. That they were on the run. That she was a prostitute from London. That the Council would have to act to turn them out of the abandoned cottage which the owner, a farmer, had given them permission to use (some said because he had met the girl in London) but in which they were living like squatters.

      Three children were playing by the back door with some chicken wire. The mother was in the kitchen. She was a woman in her late twenties with long black hair, thin long hands and grey eyes that were both bright and very liquid. Her skin had an unwashed look which is more to do with anaemia than dirt.

      ‘You won’t be able to stay here in the winter,’ he said.

      ‘Jack says he’s going to patch it up when he gets the time.’

      ‘It needs more than patching up.’

      There was a table in the kitchen and two chairs. By the stone sink there was an orange-box cupboard with some cups and plates and packets in it. Half the window above the sink was broken and there was a piece of cardboard across it. The sunshine streamed through the other half and the grey dust slowly rose and fell through the beam, so slowly that it seemed to be part of another uninhabited world.

      Later in the front room she sat down on the bed and allowed herself to ask the question for which she had really sent for him.

      ‘Doctor, can a woman of my age have heart trouble?’

      ‘It’s possible. Did you ever have rheumatic fever when you were a child?’

      ‘I don’t think so. But I get so out of breath. And if I bend down to pick something up, I can scarcely stand up proper again.’

      ‘Let me have a listen. Just pull up your blouse.’

      She wore a very worn black lace petticoat. The room was as little furnished as the kitchen. There was a large bed in one corner with some blankets on it and some more blankets on the floor. There was also a chest of drawers with a clock on it and a transistor radio. The windows were overgrown with thick ivy and since there was no plaster ceiling and holes in the rafters, the room scarcely seemed geometric and was more like a hide in a wood.

      ‘We’ll examine you properly when you come up to the surgery but I can promise you now that you haven’t got a serious heart disease.’

      ‘Oh I’m so relieved.’

      ‘You can’t go on like this. You know that don’t you? We’ve got to get you out of here –’

      ‘There’s lots more unfortunate than us,’ she said.

      The doctor laughed, and then so did she. She was still young enough for her face to change totally with her expression. Her face looked capable of surprise again.

      ‘If I won the football pools,’ she said, ‘I’d buy a big house and start a big home for children, but they say they make all kinds of difficulties these days for that kind of thing.’

      ‘Where were you living before you came here?’

      ‘In Cornwall. It was lovely there by the sea. Look.’

      She opened the top drawer of the chest and from among her own stockings and children’s socks she took out a photograph. It showed herself in high-heeled shoes,