DIARY
IAN JACK Many well-known bylines have left Times Newspapers in the diaspora of the past seven months, but none of them, I think, has served the newspaper business so humbly yet vitally (or observed its personnel so intimately and from such odd angles) as Sister Anne Bushell. Few people outside the Gray's Inn Road will have heard of her, but when I was told the news last week that she was quitting at the end of the month — unwilling to face the future and follow the caravan to Wapping — I knew at last that it was no use dreaming; that the old days were over, absolutely, and would never return. For 23 years Sister Bushell has been house paramedic at the Sunday Times. The heavy side of her workload came up from the machine room, where legs could be caught under paper reels and arms trapped in the rotary presses. Her lighter moments, or so I like to think, were provided by the paper's foreign department, which would send down its correspondents for treatment before we departed for duties in the tropics. Sister Bushell had a severe but probably sensible view of the developing world and would load us with water ster- ilisation tablets, quinine pills, Lomatil (`sets your insides like concrete'); stick needles into our fleshier parts (lust roll down your underpants a bit further, dear'); and hand out cyclostyled sheets of her health hints, which, if properly obeyed in a place like Uttar Pradesh, would confine you to a diet of ginger snaps and bottled beer (`avoid salad items — tomatoes are grown in undiluted human sewage').
Nurses in schools and factories are always mythologised, like nannies, and Sister Bushell was no exception. Many stories were told about her, but none was so remarkable, or perhaps so true, as the stories she told and tells about herself. Thanks to his diabetes, she became a great friend of the former proprietor, Lord Thomson, who never believed in needless expense and retained only one doctor, back home in Canada. He knew Sister Bushell as `Sis' and she knew him as 'Roy'. Sometimes Roy would call down from his penthouse. It would be: 'Say, Sis, why don't you tell us that one about the bedpan again?' or 'Hi, Sis, come up and meet so-and-so.' The so-and-so could be Paul Getty or Armand Hammer. She likes to tell the Armand Hammer story. Thomson: `Sis, I'd like for you to meet Dr Hammer.' Bushell: 'Well, I'm glad to see you've got a proper doctor at last.' Thomson: 'Hell no, Sis, this is the president of Occidental Oil.' Getty was a worry to her. 'He had Parkin- son's, you know. Lord Thomson would say, "Gee, Sis, look at the state of him. Can't you fix him something? He always looks as though he's come straight from a bereavement." ' The Sheikh of Abu Dhabi caused circumspection. 'We were all riding together to one of those livery company dinners in the city. I think I was sitting on Lord Thomson's knee. He said, "Why don't you sit on the sheikh's knee, he's richer than I am." I said, "No thank you, Arabs are liable to pinch your bum." ' But their relationship also had a more serious side. For years Sis badgered Roy to get into North Sea oil and, sure enough, he did! When the first samples from the Thomson fields were flown south from Aberdeen for his lordship's inspection, he presented her with a bottle of the stuff. She has it still; a very small bottle, she said last week, about the size of a urine sample.
Summer is the most miserable season in India and therefore the time when Indians who can afford it 'go out' (i.e. flee the country) to spend a few weeks in a saner climate. Britain still attracts them --7 a couple from Bombay told me that they found Torquay 'lovelier than Nice, though the people were much duller' — and it is thanks to Indian friends that in the summer I see a side of London which is normally as closed to me as the zenana. I don't mean Brick Lane, Southall, or the borough of Brent. I mean the rich side, 'London proper' as they say in India; oddly fur- nished service flats in Mayfair and Belgra- via, villas in Hampstead Garden Suburb, the Palm Beach Casino. A small slice of India is prospering all right, and yet few of the Indians I meet seem particularly confi- dent about the future. They say that the clash of interests between rival castes, religious and lingustic groups has never been so bitter. A good barometer here is the Sikh joke. A few years ago the jokes about the Sikhs stood a long way behind similar jokes about the Irish in terms of viciousness. Question: Why do both India and Pakistan secretly favour a separate Sikh nation? Answer: Because both coun- tries need a duffer state. I have heard Sikhs themselves tell that joke and laugh at it. But it is unlikely that Sikhs, or anyone with half a mind, could laugh at the latest offering from New Delhi. Question: Why does America have Aids and India have Sikhs? Answer: Because America had the first choice.
In India, they blame 'communalism', a word which is most simply defined as the belief that, because a group of people follow a particular religion, they have as a result common social, political and econo- mic interests. This, at least in theory, is anathema to a state founded on liberal and secular principles. 'Communalism' is fre- quently attacked in the newspapers and from political platforms, and the word `communalist' carries the same stigma as `racist' in this country. So far the word has not taken root in Britain, which prefers to think of itself as a 'plural' rather than `communal' society, though it sometimes seems to be sliding relentlessly towards the latter. Political agents of all parties have already divided the vote into the white vote, the brown vote, and the black vote and may soon, with increasing sophistica- tion, further divide it into the Punjabi, Gujerati, Bangladeshi, Nigerian and Ras- tafarian votes. The process may be inevit- able; its defenders point to the grand voting coalitions of the American Demo- crats. But perhaps for a moment they should look east rather than west, and ponder the costs of a political system which, despite its high ambitions, has ditched ideology and harnessed itself to a simple statement: 'If you are a Hindu/ Muslim/Sikh/Brahmin/Untouchable (de- lete those inapplicable), then I am your friend.'
Islington seems to have replaced Scun- thorpe, Wigan and Cowdenbeath as a joke among Spectator readers. There is nothing hilarious about living here, unless our gay mayor has you slapping your thighs (surely not). One consequence of my burglary (last week's Diary) is a letter from the Islington Victim Support Scheme, in which a Mrs Cadle offered 'sympathy, under- standing, advice and practical help'. I telephoned to thank her and she turned out to be an old age pensioner who spends most of her time, unpaid, giving comfort to lonely old people on council estates whose homes have been looted. 'Usually they steal their burial money,' said Mrs Cadle. `That's a great worry for old people. "Who's going to bury me now?" they ask me. I tell them, don't worry, the council will do it.' Ah, as the dying woman said in the Alan Bennett play, we did laugh.
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