“Hey Danny, how you doing?” he said. “Come on now, we better get going. There’s no knowing what the traffic will be like in Central London.”
Danny couldn’t find much conversation in the car on the way to the station. Struggling with nerves and in a monosyllabic mood, he wasn’t much better on the train. Lenny attempted to distract him with various topics, but Danny wasn’t biting.
Patsy headed to the buffet car to buy them cups of tea.
“Albert wishes you the best, by the way, Danny,” Lenny said.
Danny focused. “Does he? How is he?”
“He seems OK, a bit quiet,” said Lenny. “You know Albert.”
“I thought I did,” Danny answered.
Back in London, Albert was walking to work as usual. It was a lovely evening, with kids still playing in the street and neighbours chatting about this and that on the front step. He couldn’t help smiling at the familiarity of it all.
Around the corner, he saw some small boys playing cricket against a wall. The batsman took his guard armed with a plank of wood, doing his best to protect the stumps chalked on the wall. Albert watched one of them bowl and waited to see the result.
The bowler delivered a full toss. The batsman, with a mighty swing of his bit of wood, hit the well-worn tennis ball sky high. The bowler ran to catch it – straight into the path of an oncoming car.
Without thinking, Albert rushed into the road and pushed the boy clear of danger. Someone was screaming. Dimly Albert heard the screech of brakes, before he found himself tossed like a rag doll into the air. For a moment, everything went black.
The next thing Albert knew, he was lying in the road and staring at the sky. There was blood all around him. One of the cricket players was crying. “I never saw him!” someone – the driver, Albert guessed – was protesting. “He just come out of nowhere!”
“Here you are, love, a cup of strong, sweet tea’ll set you right. Don’t you worry about the old fella, the ambulance will be here in a minute.”
Through the wails and shouts, Albert heard the distant sound of an ambulance bell. He lay quietly, unable to move, as people clustered around, peering down at him, some with concern and others with blatant curiosity.
“You all right, fella?”
“What happened, then?”
Albert stared up at them. He wanted to apologise for wasting their time, but he couldn’t find his voice. His head was throbbing like he’d taken a knock-out punch.
The crowd parted as the ambulance arrived.
“Out the way, there you go. All right, sir? We’ll have you in the hospital in a jiffy.”
Strong hands lifted him off the road and on to a stretcher. A vicious stab of pain shot up Albert’s leg.
As the ambulance sped through the streets, a medic did some tests on Albert, shining light into his eyes, testing his temperature and blood pressure.
“Stay with me, sir.”
His head wound was cleaned and dressed, his legs gently strapped together. Normally as strong as an oak, Albert was not too happy with the fuss, but not really capable of arguing the point.
He shortly found himself being wheeled into the Accident and Emergency Department of the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, formerly known as the Whitechapel Infirmary for the Poor. That distinctive hospital smell was unmistakable. Albert gazed up at the passing fluorescent lights on the ceiling as nurses wheeled him along to the X-ray department.
“Head blow, is it?” said the waiting doctor.
“A few broken bones too, Doctor, by the looks of it.”
Albert was hurting, but didn’t show it. This was all a nuisance, but a nuisance he had to endure.
Two hospital porters lifted him into the space-age X-ray machine.
“Lie still for us, sir, would you? Nice and still now.”
The machine purred into action. The pain in Albert’s head was now competing with the pain in his body, and winning.
X-rays done, Albert was taken to the hospital ward and a waiting bed.
The ward was full of mainly older men groaning and coughing, with a little meaningless babble from a lost soul in one corner.
The matron bustled over as soon as Albert was settled. An attractive, portly woman with a soft West Country accent, she smoothed Albert’s pillow and folded her arms.
“Comfortable are we, Mr Kemp? What have you been up to?”
Albert gazed up at her no-nonsense face, her pristine uniform.
“I had a fight with a car bonnet,” he replied.
The matron tutted. Her manner was business-like, and she had the perfect balance of authority and caring about her.
“Well, it looks like the car won,” she said. “Now, the doctor will study your X-rays and should be with you in a little while. I just have to fill in some details. Are you all right to answer some questions?”
“I’ll do my best,” said Albert weakly.
“Good boy.”
With Albert feeling like a helpless kid, “good boy” seemed about right.
“So,” said the matron, consulting her notes. “Your name is Albert Charles Kemp, we know that. Date of birth?”
Albert’s head was pounding. It was difficult to think. “Ninth of November, eighteen ninety-eight.”
“So you are aged sixty-eight?”
Albert felt faintly astonished. Was he really that old?
“Apparently,” he said.
“Blood group?”
“I don’t bloody know,” Albert quipped, feeling irritated now.
“We’ll soon find out,” said Matron. “Next of kin?”
Albert felt hollow, thinking of Vera and Tommy. The only other person he could think of was Lenny, but Lenny was not a relation.
“No next of kin,” he said.
He’d never thought about himself like that before, all alone in the world. It made him feel sad and empty. He wondered if anyone knew what had happened, or where he was.
Matron gently took his hand. “Thank you, Mr Kemp. The doctor will be with you in a minute.”
Albert felt anxious. He had arranged with Lenny that Lenny would telephone the Live and Let Live with an update after Danny’s fight tomorrow night, but here he was, marooned in a hospital bed. It was a poxy nuisance, that’s what it was.
The white-coated doctor sported a polka-dot bow tie. “How are you feeling, Mr Kemp?” he asked. “You’ve had quite an accident. Having studied your X-rays, I’m pleased to say that your head injuries are superficial and the cuts and bruises will heal in time. Not such good news on the rest of you, though. I’m sorry to tell you that you have broken your left leg in two places, fractured your right wrist and broken two of your ribs.”
“But apart from that I’m fine,” said Albert, trying to lighten the diagnosis.
The doctor looked back at his notes. “The nurses will arrange to put a plaster cast on your leg and wrist. I’m afraid we can’t do much about the broken ribs, but they too will heal in time. I’ll prescribe some painkillers for you.”
The seriousness of his predicament was beginning to dawn on Albert.
“So when can I go home?”
“As soon as you’re well enough,” said the doctor. “Now just rest.”
The groans and delirium of some of his fellow patients rattled in Albert’s aching head. He hated the situation he was in. He felt imprisoned, and he didn’t like it.
A pretty nurse materialised at the end of his bed.
“Hello Mr Kemp,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve got some tablets for you. Here, take two now and I’ll come back in a couple of hours so you can take some more.”
Albert obediently swallowed the painkillers.
“Well done,” said the nurse, patting his hand.
Albert could understand why people sometimes fell in love with nurses. This one’s angel-like presence was really quite special.
“Next, we will have to put a plaster cast on that leg of yours and…” She stopped to look at Albert’s notes. “And your right wrist. You have been in the wars, Mr Kemp, haven’t you?”