ANOTHER VOICE
Somehow I feel ashamed to be seen hurt
MATTHEW PARRIS
One's instinct, of course, is to get up at once. One must show it's not serious — just a little fall — ha, ha — silly me! — what a surprise! — no, I'm fine, honestly. And for ten seconds I did seem all right; I was back on my feet too fast for some in the minibus to have noticed the tumble at all.
It was midnight, outside Holborn Tube station. The minibus had brought me back in the company of a few fellow guests, from a splendid feast at Brackett Hall, near Wel- wyn. This had been a professional engage- ment for me (as guest speaker) and now I felt as cheerful and relaxed as you might expect after a good dinner in good compa- ny, two glasses of wine and a brandy. I might have failed a breath-test but could have walked down a white line, touched my nose blindfold and negotiated Peter- Piper-picked-a-peck-of-pickled-peppers without mishap.
Descending from the bus I did not, how- ever, negotiate the ramped kerb without mishap. One shoe slipped as though the pavement were ice. Not being a falling-over kind of chap, and having spotted no banana skin, my supposition is that someone must have spat there, but it is only supposition who knows or cares? It happened, anyway. My feet whipped from beneath me, I must have thrown out my left arm to break my fall, and I hurtled to the ground, crashing down hard on my left thigh. I almost broke the arm, momentarily dislocating the elbow. It popped back in. I sprang back up as though bounced from the pavement, waving merrily with my other arm: 'I'm fine! Byee!' I just didn't want a fuss.
And off they drove. Phew! Thank God they've gone. Grit teeth. Must get into Tube station in dignified manner. Reach into left pocket with right arm for travel pass. Ouch! Get through turnstile without making an exhibition of myself . . . good . . . now, onto moving escalator and . . . I began to faint. This was from the pain of the elbow. There is one sure way to stop fainting and that is to sit down fast. I sat down fast.
And so it came to pass that a few minutes after midnight on a Thursday morning three weeks ago, a Times columnist could have been seen, were there anyone to see, which mercifully there was not, sitting on the down escalator at Holborn Tube in his best blue suit, head lowered, being borne gently towards the centre of the Earth. Luckily this is a very long escalator. I remember thinking, 'What if I still can't stand when I reach the bottom?' It struck me that without being noticed one might crawl the few yards from the end of the descending escalator to the start of the ascending escalator, and then go all the way back up again, still semi-recumbent, and then perhaps descend again. But for how long?
What did not occur to me was that could simply have rested for a while by the bottom of the escalator. Odd: somehow it is imperative to keep moving on the London Underground. Cease motion and you fall through the net and join the addicts and the beggars — no longer a passenger but a case. I was anxious to maintain progress, even in a circle. But did they have CCTV here? How many times could you ride up and down the escalator, sitting — and crawling the few yards from end to end before someone in a uniform came to take you away?
And, worse, what if I were to pass out now? What happens to a comatose body when it reaches the bit where the moving steps disappear beneath the metal grilles? Might my tie get caught? Would I be uncer- emoniously dumped on the steel footplate at the bottom, along with the Coca-Cola cans? All these things I wondered as, still unable to stand, I was carried gently down past the bra advertisements and the invita- tions to jet away to Oslo for the weekend.
But strength returned. I rose painfully before the foot of the escalator, tried a ten- tative limp and found legs still working. `Got to get to platform,' I thought, 'Seats on platform: I limped forward. All this time I was unaware of seeing anyone else. But the platform, when I reached it, was crowded. I somehow felt they all knew, Or suspected; so though I spotted a box to sit on I decided to stay standing in case anyone should suppose I could not. A train came and I boarded no prob- lem. At Bank station I made it easily to the Docklands Light Railway. The limp home from Limehouse was accomplished at speed. It was a limp I was to demonstrate for the better part of three weeks until (as I write) it is at last almost gone.
I can almost tie my tie now, and fasten top buttons. The bruises are fading, but in retrospect it was obviously a bad fall. I should have accepted that. I should have asked the minibus to wait and drive me to some ghastly accident and emergency out- patients centre somewhere. Or I could have taken a taxi to hospital. Or at least home• Or at least seen a doctor the next day. But, no, forget it — what a palaver, and a wait, and a referral, and the come-back-for- results-on-Tuesday-week that always turns out to be. Thank heavens the NHS is not customer-friendly; it suppresses demand. And anyway . . . well, how to say this without apparent discourtesy? I mean none, but, like the natives of the continent where I was born, part of me inwardly holds infirmity to be a matter of personal shame. Not logical, I know — indefensible, insult- ing, inhumane — but I've seen those ranks of the injured or ill in Africa, waiting with their relatives outside mission hospitals• They are silent, not talking gleefully about their illnesses as we English do, but ashamed, skin grey and heads hung down. They have failed: failed to be whole men and women as their gods and their tribe require. When an African is ill he does not seek company, but creeps away. I noticed this also with my mice, when I used to keep mice. When a mouse was ill I would try to tuck it up warm in its nest, but it would always crawl to the cage's edge and lie there gasping, away from fellow mice. One day I shall regret saying so, but I cannot shake from my thoughts the ghost of a feeling that this is the proper response to infirmity.
Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and a columnist of the Times.
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