‘What I want is Meals on Wheels, but they won’t give me that.’
‘No Home Help?’
‘No. They sent me one. She said, Where’s your Hoover! Too good for a carpet sweeper. And sat here drinking my tea and eating my biscuits. And when I sent her shopping, she couldn’t be bothered to take an extra step to save a penny, she’d pay anything, I could shop cheaper than she, so I told her not to come back.’
‘Well, anyway …’ And I heard there was a different note in my voice. For I had been quite ashamed, watching Hermione, seeing myself, all that pretty flattering charm, as if she had – I had! – an eye directed at the performance: how well I am doing it! How attractive and kind I am … I was fighting to keep that note out of my voice, to be direct and simple. ‘Anyway, I think you should think about taking what is available. And to start with, there’s the nurse every morning, while you don’t feel well.’
‘Why should I need a nurse?’ she inquired, her face averted.
This meant, Why, when you are coming in to me twice a day? And, too, But why should you come in, it’s not your job. And, most strongly, Please, please.
If I were with someone like Hermione, my husband, Joyce, Sister Georgie, I would say, ‘What an emotional blackmailer, you aren’t going to get away with that.’ The fine nose of our kind for advantage, taken or given.
By the time I left I had promised I would continue to go in morning and evening. And that I would ring up ‘them’ saying she did not want a nurse. And when we said goodbye she was cold and angry, frantic because of her helplessness, because she knew she should not expect so much of me, and because …
And now I am sitting here, feeling quite wild myself, trapped is what I’m feeling. And I have been all evening in the bath, thinking.
About what I really care about. My life, my real life, is in the office, is at work. Because I have been working since I was nineteen, and always for the same magazine, I’ve taken it for granted, have not seen that this is my life. I was with the magazine in its old format, have been part of three changes, and the second of these I could say was partly because of me. Joyce and I made it all happen. I have been there longer than she has: for she came in as Production Manager, mid-sixties, when I had already been there fifteen or twenty years, working my way through all the departments. If there is one person in that magazine who can be said to be Lilith, it’s me.
And yet I take it all for granted. And I am not going to jeopardize what I really care about for the sake of Maudie Fowler. I shall go to Munich, not for two days, as I said today, but for the usual four, and I shall tell her she must say yes to the nurse.
Friday – in Munich.
Went in to Maudie this morning. She in her chair, staring at a cold grate, inside a carapace of black rags. I fetched her coal, made her tea, fed the cat. She seemed to be cold, yet with the glitter of fever. She was coughing and coughing.
I said to her, ‘Mrs Fowler, I am going to Munich and I shall be away four days.’ No response at all. I said, ‘Mrs Fowler, I have to go. But I am going to ring up Hermione Whitfield and say you must have a nurse. Just till I come back.’ She went on staring into the cold grate. So I began to lay the fire – but did not know how, and she forced herself up out of her warm nest and slowly, slowly put in bits of paper, bits of wood, a fire-lighter, built up the fire. I looked around – no newspaper, no more fire-lighters, nothing.
I went out to the shop, and on the way back saw that there was a skip in the road outside her door, and there were plenty of little slats of wood, old laths from the demolished walls – she had been collecting these to start her fire. Conscious of how I must look, in all my smart gear, I filled a carrier bag with these bits of wood. While I was doing this, I chanced to glance up and saw that I was being observed from various windows. Old faces, old ladies. But I did not have time to take anything in, but rushed down with the wood and the groceries. She was again in her listless pose in front of the now roaring fire.
I did not know whether a nurse would build a fire.
I asked, ‘Will a nurse make up a fire for you?’
She did not answer. I was getting angry. And was as distressed as she. The whole situation was absurd. And yet it could not be any other way.
When I stood up to leave I said, ‘I am going to ring up and ask for a nurse and please don’t send the nurse away.’
‘I don’t want any nurse.’
I stood there, worried because I was late, and it was Conference day and I’ve never ever been late. And worried about her. And angry. And resentful. And yet she tugged at me, I wanted to take that dirty old bundle into my arms and hug her. I wanted to slap her and shake her.
‘What is all this about hospital,’ I asked, ‘what? You’d think you were being threatened with … what is so terrible about it? Have you ever been there?’
‘Yes, two winters ago. Christmas.’
‘And?’
She was sitting straight up now, her sharp chin lifted in a combative way, her eyes frightened and angry.
‘No, they were kind enough. But I don’t like it. They fill you with pills and pills and pills, you feel as if your mind has been taken from you, they treat you like a child. I don’t want it …’ And then she added, in the tone of one trying to be fair, and at this attempt leading her into more, more than she had intended. ‘ … There was one little nurse. She rubbed my back for me when I coughed …’ And she looked at me quickly, and away, and I knew she had wanted me to rub her back for her. It had not occurred to me! I do not know how!
‘Well,’ I said, ‘no one is going to force you to hospital.’
She said, ‘If they’d take me in after last time.’ And suddenly she was laughing and alert, her enjoying self.
‘What did you do?’ I said, pleased to be able to laugh with her.
‘I walked out!’ And she chuckled. ‘Yes, I had had enough. And I was constipated with all that good eating, because I am not saying they don’t feed you, and I was feeling farther and farther from myself every minute with the pills. I said, Where are my clothes? They said, You can’t go home in this weather, Mrs Fowler, you’ll die of it. For there was snow. I said, You bring me my clothes or I’ll walk out in your hospital nightdress. And so they brought them. They would not look at me or speak to me, they were so angry. I walked down into the hall and said to the porter, Call me a taxi. My bits of money had been stolen in the hospital ward. But I was going to tell the driver and ask him to bring me home for the love of God. If God is anyone they know these days. But there was a woman there in reception and she said, I’ll take you, love. And brought me home. I think of her. I think of them who do me good, I do.’ And she gave me the most marvellous merry smile, her girl’s smile.
‘For all that, I have to go to Munich. I’ll be away for four days, and you know very well you can’t manage. I want to hear you say, in so many words, you don’t want a nurse. I’m treating you seriously, not treating you like a child! If you say no nurse, I’ll do no more. But I think you should let me. A nurse isn’t going to be the end of the world.’
‘And how about all the pills then?’
‘All right. But say it, you don’t want me to ring a nurse.’ And I added, really desperate, ‘For God’s sake, Maudie, have some sense.’ I realized I had called her by her Christian name, but she was not put out.
She shrugged. ‘I have no choice, I suppose.’
I went over to her, bent down to kiss her, and she put out her cheek, and I kissed it.
I went off, waving from the door, I hope not a ‘charming’ wave.
I was late for the Conference.
First