When I got back, again I thought of death. She sat there, eyes closed, and so still, I thought not breathing.
But then, her blue eyes were open and she was looking at the fire.
‘Drink your tea,’ I said. ‘And I’ll grill you a bit of fish. Can you eat it?’
‘Yes, I will.’
In the kitchen I tried to find anything that wasn’t greasy, and gave up. I put the fish on the grill, and opened the door briefly to get in some clean air. Sleet notwithstanding.
I took her the fish, and she sat herself up and ate it all, slowly, and her hands trembled, but she finished it and I saw she had been hungry.
I said, ‘I’ve been in Munich. To see all the clothes for the autumn. I’ve been seeing all the new styles.’
‘I’ve never been out of England.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you all about it when you are a bit better.’
To this she did not respond. But at last, just when I thought I would go, she remarked, ‘I’ve a need for some clean clothes.’
I did not know how to interpret this. I did see – I have become sensitive enough for that – at least that this was not at all a simple request.
She wanted me to buy her clothes?
I looked at her. She made herself look at me, and said, ‘Next door, you’ll find things.’
‘What?’
She gave a trembling, discouraged sort of shrug.
‘Vest. Knickers. Petticoat. Don’t you wear underclothes, that you are asking?’
Again, the automatic anger, as if a button had been pushed. I went next door into the room I knew she didn’t like me in.
The bed that has the good eiderdown, the wardrobe, the dressing table with little china trinkets, the good bookcases. But everywhere piles and heaps of – rubbish. I could not believe it. Newspapers dating back fifty years, crumbling away; awful scraps of material, stained and yellow, bits of lace, dirty handkerchiefs, shreds of ribbon – I’ve never seen anything like it. She had never thrown anything away, I think. In the drawers, disorder, and they were crammed with – but it would take pages to describe. I wished I had the photographer there – reflex thought! Petticoats, camisoles, knickers, stays, vests, old dresses or bits of them, blouses … and nothing less than twenty years old, and some of them going back to World War One. The difference between clothes now and then: these were all ‘real’ materials, cottons, silks, woollens. Not a man-made fibre there. But everything torn, or stained, or dirty. I pulled out bundles of things, and every one I examined, first for interest, and then to see if there was anything wearable, or clean. I found at last a wool vest, and long wool drawers, and a rather nice pink silk petticoat, and then a woollen dress, blue, and a cardigan. They were clean, or nearly. I worked away in there, shivering with cold, and thinking of how I had loved myself all these last days, how much I do love myself, for being in control, on top; and thought that the nearest I could get to poor Maudie’s helplessness was remembering what it had been like to be a child, hoping that you won’t wet your pants before you get to the lavatory.
I took the clothes into the other room, which was very hot now, the flames roaring up. I said to her, ‘Do you want me to help you change?’ The sideways, irritable movement of the head, which I knew now meant I was being stupid.
But I did not know why.
So I sat down opposite her, and said, ‘I’ll finish my tea before it’s freezing.’ I noted that I was drinking it without feeling sick: I have become used to drinking out of grimy cups, I noted that with interest. Once Maudie had been like me, perpetually washing herself, washing cups, plates, dusting, washing her hair.
She was talking, at random I thought, about when she had been in hospital. I half listened, wishing that doctors and nurses could hear how their hospitals are experienced by someone like Maudie. Prisons. Reformatories. But then I realized she was telling me about how, because she had not been well enough to be put in the bath, two nurses had washed her in her bed, and I understood.
‘I’ll put on the kettles,’ I said. ‘And you must tell me what to do.’
I put on two kettles, found an enamel basin, which I examined with interest, for I have not seen any but plastic ones for a long time, and searched for soap and a flannel. They were in a hole in the wall above the sink: a brick taken out and the cavity painted.
I took the basin, kettles, soap, flannel, a jug of cold water, next door. Maudie was struggling out of her top layer of clothes. I helped her, and realized I had not co-ordinated this at all. I rushed about, found newspapers, cleared the table, spread thick papers all over it, arranged basin, kettles, jug, washing things. No towel. I rushed into the kitchen, found a damp dirty towel, rushed into the front room and scrabbled about, seeming to myself to be taking all day. But it was really only a few moments. I was bothered about Maudie standing there, half naked, and ill, and coughing. At last I found a cleanish towel. She was standing by the basin, her top half nude. There is nothing of her. A fragile rib cage under creased yellow skin, her shoulder bones like a skeleton’s, and at the end of thin stick arms, strong working hands. Long thin breasts hanging down.
She was clumsily rubbing soap on to the flannel, which, needless to say, was slimy. I should have washed it out first. I ran next door again, tore a bit off an old clean towel and took it back. I knew she wanted to tick me off for tearing the towel; she would have done if she had not been saving her breath.
I slowly washed her top half, in plenty of soap and hot water, but the grime on her neck was thick, and to get that off would have meant rubbing at it, and it was too much. She was trembling with weakness. I was comparing this frail old body with my mother’s: but I had only caught glimpses of her sick body. She had washed herself – and only now was I wondering at what cost – till she went into hospital. And when Georgie came, she gave her a wash. But not her child-daughter, not me. Now I washed Maudie Fowler, and thought of Freddie, how his bones had seemed to sort of flatten and go thin under flesh that clung to them. Maudie might be only skin and bones but her body doesn’t have that beaten-down look, as if the flesh is sinking into the bones. She was chilly, she was sick, she was weak – but I could feel the vitality beating there: life. How strong it is, life. I had never thought that before, never felt life in that way, as I did then, washing Maudie Fowler, a fierce angry old woman. Oh, how angry: it occurred to me that all her vitality is in her anger, I must not, must not resent it or want to hit back.
Then there was the problem of her lower half, and I was waiting for guidance.
I slipped the ‘clean’ vest on over her head, and wrapped the ‘clean’ cardigan round her, and then saw she was sliding down the thick bunches of skirt. And then it hit me, the stench. Oh, it is no good, I can’t not care. Because she had been too weak or too tired to move, she had shat her pants, shat everything.
Knickers, filthy … Well, I am not going on, not even to let off steam, it makes me feel sick. But I was looking at the vest and petticoats she had taken off, and they were brown and yellow with shit. Anyway. She stood there, her bottom half naked. I slid newspapers under her, so she was standing on thick wads of them. I washed and washed her, all her lower half. She had her big hands down on the table for support. When it came to her bottom she thrust it out, as a child might, and I washed all of it, creases too. Then I threw away all that water, refilled the basin, quickly put the kettles on again. I washed her private parts, and thought about that phrase for the first time: for she was suffering most terribly because this stranger was invading her privateness. And I did all her legs again, again, since the dirt had run down her legs. And I made her stand in the basin and washed her feet, yellow gnarled old feet. The water was hot again over the flaring gas, and I helped her pull on the ‘clean’ bloomers. By then, having seen what was possible, they were clean to me, being just a bit dusty. And then the nice pink petticoat.
‘Your face,’ I said. For we had not done that. ‘How about your hair?’