‘And then?’
‘And then the autumn was coming, and the hotel closed. Mrs Privett came to me and said, Maudie, I want you to stay with me. In the winters I open a place on the sea, in Nice that was. France. She wanted me to go with her. But I said no, I was a milliner, that was my trade, but it broke my heart not to go with her.’
‘Why did you really not go with her?’ I asked.
‘You are sharp,’ she said. ‘You are right. It was Laurie. I went away from London to Brighton and didn’t say where I was, so he would value me, and he did. He was waiting for me when I got off the train, though how he found out I never did know. And he said, So you’re back? As you can see, I said. Tomorrow you are coming for a walk, he said. Am I? I said.
‘And so I married him. I married him instead of the German. I married the wrong man.’
I gave a grimace at this, and she said, ‘And did you marry the wrong one too?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘he married the wrong woman.’
And this tickled her so much she lay back in her chair, her brown old wrinkled hands squeezing her knees, and she laughed and laughed. She has a young fresh laugh, not an old woman’s laugh at all.
‘Oh, oh, oh,’ she cried, ‘I had never thought of that. Well, Laurie thought he married the wrong woman, but then what woman would have been right? For he never stayed with any one of us.’
That was this afternoon. I did not leave her until after six. She came with me to the outside door and said, ‘Thank you for getting the coal. You mustn’t mind me, dear, mustn’t mind my ways.’
Sunday.
I saw The White Raven. I see that I am like Maudie, the housemaids – I like being frightened. After the film I came back here for my usual Sunday evening’s occupation, making sure clothes are all prepared for the next week, grooming. I saw that I had spent all day alone and that is how I spend my weekends, usually. Solitary. I did not know I was until Freddie died. He liked us to have proper dinner parties every week or so, and we had his colleagues and their wives, and I asked girls from work, usually Joyce and her husband. My food was perfect, and Freddie did the wine. We were proud of how well we did it. And all that has been blown away, gone. I never saw his associates after the funeral. When I wondered if I would have the perfect little dinner parties, I couldn’t be bothered. At work, I am seen by everybody as this self-sufficient competent woman, with a full life. Friends, weekends, entertainment. I go each week to three or four lunches, drinks parties, receptions for the mag. I don’t like this, or dislike it, it is part of my job. I know nearly everyone, we all know each other. Then I come home after work, if I am not having supper with Joyce to discuss something, and I buy takeaway, and then – my evening begins. I go into the bathroom and stay there two, three hours. Then watch a little television. At weekends I go about by myself. How do you describe such a person? And yet I am not lonely. If anyone had said to me, before Freddie died, that I could live like this, and not want anything different … And yet I must want something different? I shall spend a weekend with Georgie. I shall try again. I did not go in to Maudie today, thinking it all too much. I am sitting here writing this, in bed, wondering if she expected me. If she was disappointed.
Monday.
Dropped in after work, with some chocolates. She seemed stand-offish. Cross because I did not go in yesterday? She said she had not gone out because it was cold, and she felt bad. After I got home I wondered if she wanted me to go and shop for her. But after all, she got along before I blew into her life – crashed into it.
Tuesday.
Joyce said she didn’t want to go to Munich for the Clothes Fair, trouble with husband, and her children playing up, would I go? I was reluctant, though I enjoy these trips: realized it was because of Maudie Fowler. This struck me as crazy, and I said I’d go.
Went in to Maudie after work. The flames were bursting out of the grate, and she was hot and angry. No, she didn’t feel well, and no, I wasn’t to trouble myself. She was so rude, but I went into the kitchen, which stank of sour food and cat food that had gone off, and saw she had very little there. I said I was going out to shop for her. I now recognize these moments when she is pleased that I will do this or that, but her pride is hurting. She lowers her sharp little chin, her lips tremble a little, and she stares in silence at the fire.
I did not ask what to get, but as I left she shouted after me about fish for the cat. I got a lot of things, put them on her kitchen table, boiled up some milk, took it to her.
‘You ought to be in bed,’ I said.
She said, ‘And the next thing, you’ll be fetching the doctor.’
‘Well, is that so terrible?’
‘He’ll send me away,’ she said.
‘Where to?’
‘Hospital, where else?’
I said to her, ‘You talk as if hospital is a sort of prison.’
She said, ‘I have my thoughts, and you keep yours.’
Meanwhile, I could see she was really ill. I had to fight with her, to help her to bed. I was looking around for a nightdress, but I understood at last she did not use one. She goes to bed in vest and drawers, with an old cardigan pinned at the throat by a nice garnet brooch.
She was suffering because I saw that her bed was not clean, and that her underclothes were soiled. The sweet stench was very strong: I know now it is urine.
I put her in, made her tea, but she said, ‘No, no, I’ll only be running.’
I looked around, found that a chair in the corner of the room was a commode and dragged it close to the bed.
‘Who’s going to empty it?’ she demanded, furious.
I went out of the kitchen to see what the lavatory was like: a little cement box, with a very old unlidded seat, and a metal chain that had broken and had string extending it. It was clean. But very cold. No wonder she has a cough. It is very cold at the moment, February – and I only feel how cold it really is when I think of her, Maudie, for everywhere I am is so well heated and protected. If she is going out to that lavatory from the hot fire …
I said to her, ‘I’ll drop in on my way to work.’
I am sitting here, in bed, having bathed and washed every scrap of me, hair too, writing this and wondering how it is I am in this position with Maudie.
Wednesday.
Booked for Munich. Went in to Maudie after work. The doctor was there. Dr Thring. An old man, fidgety and impatient, standing by the door, I knew because he was farther from the heat and smell of the place, and he was saying, to an angry, obstinate, tiny old woman, who stood in the middle of her floor as if she was in front of the firing squad, ‘I won’t go into hospital, I won’t, you can’t make me,’ ‘Then I won’t come in to look after you, you can’t make me do that.’ He was shouting. When he saw me, he said, in a different voice, relieved, desperate, ‘Tell her, if you’re a friend, she should be in hospital.’
She was looking at me quite terrified.
‘Mrs Fowler,’ I said, ‘why don’t you want to go into hospital?’
She turned her back on us both, and picked up the