When Mrs Fowler went into the kitchen to get some biscuits, I went with her and watched her pull up a stool to stand on so she could put on the ceiling light. I examined the frayed flexes, the damp walls.
Later I said to her, ‘I’m going to ask my electrician to come in here, otherwise you are going to kill yourself.’
She sat quite still for a few minutes, then she raised her eyes, looked at me, and sighed. I knew this was a moment of importance. I had said something she had dreamed of someone saying: but now this was a burden on her, and she wished the moment, and me, away.
She said, ‘I’ve managed well enough.’ This was timid, and an appeal, and sullen.
I said, ‘It’s a disgrace that you should have to be in these conditions. Your electricity, it’s a death-trap.’
She gave a snort of laughter at this. ‘A death-trap, is it?’ And we laughed. But I was full of panic, inside me something struggled to run, to flee, out of the situation.
I felt trapped. I am trapped. Because I have made a promise to her. Silently. But it is a promise.
I went home and, as I opened my door, the door opposite crept open: Mrs Penny, on the watch. ‘Excuse me,’ she cried, ‘but I have been waiting for you to come home. I simply must ask a favour of you.’
I said ungraciously, ‘What is it?’
‘I forgot to buy butter when I went out and …’
‘I’ll bring it,’ I said, and in a surge of energy went into my flat, got half a pound of butter, thrust it into her hands, said, ‘Don’t mention it,’ and ran back into my own place with a bang of the door. The bang was deliberate. She had butter, I knew that. What I was thinking was, she has a son and daughter, and if they don’t look after her, tant pis. It’s not my responsibility.
I was in a frenzy of irritation, a need to shake something off – Mrs Fowler. I filled the bath. I put every stitch of clothing I had worn that day ready for the launderette. I could feel the smelly air of Mrs Fowler’s place on my skin and hair.
My bathroom, I realized that evening, is where I live. Probably even my home. When I moved here I copied the bathroom I had made in the old flat, to the last detail. But I did not do anything particular with the living room and bedroom, the study. Freddie joked that his rival was my bathroom.
I had the paint mixed especially, ivory with a tone of pink. I had Spanish tiles, very delicate and light, coral, turquoise, and ochre, and the blinds were painted to match the tiles. The bath is a grey-blue. Sometimes a room is perfect – nothing can be added and nothing changed. When Joyce saw it she wanted it photographed for the mag. I said no: it would be like being photographed nude. I bath every morning, every night. I lie in the bath and soak for hours. I read in the bath, with my head and knees floating on waterproof pillows. I have two shelves full of salts and bath bubbles. That evening I lay in the bath, adding hot water as it chilled, and I looked at my body. It is a solid firm white body. No fat on it. God forbid! But solid. It doesn’t sag or droop yet. Well, no children. There was never time for children, and when I said to Freddie, Yes, I’ll fit one in now, I did not get pregnant. He was cheerful and nice about it. I don’t know how deeply he felt it. I know he wanted children, but not how much. I was careful not to find out, I suppose.
I came out of the bath and stood in the doorway wrapped in my bath sheet and looked at the bathroom and thought about Mrs Fowler. She has never had hot water. Has lived in that filthy hole, with cold water, since before the First World War.
I wished I had not responded to her, and I was wondering all evening how to escape.
In the morning I woke up and it was as if I was facing some terrible fate. Because I knew I was going to look after Mrs Fowler. To an extent, anyway.
I rang up the electrician. I explained everything to him. I went to work depressed and even frightened.
That night the electrician rang: Mrs Fowler had screamed at him, What do you want? And he had gone away.
I said I would meet him there next evening.
He was there at six, and I saw his face as she opened the door and the smell and the squalor hit him. Then he said to her, in a nice cheeky sort of way, ‘Well, you got at me good and proper last night, didn’t you?’
She examined him slowly, then looked at me as if I were a stranger, stood aside, and went into her ‘living room’ while I told him what to do. I should have stayed with her, but I had brought work home and I told her this.
‘I didn’t ask you to put yourself out,’ she said.
I struggled with myself, and then gave her a hug. ‘Oh, go on, don’t be a cross-patch,’ I said, and left. She had tears in her eyes. As for me, I was fighting disgust, the stale smell of her. And the other smell, a sharp sweet smell which I didn’t know.
Jim rang me yesterday and said he had done what he could to the place, put in new cable and switches at a height she could reach, and got her a bed lamp.
He told me the cost – as bad as I thought. I said I would send him a cheque. A silence. He wanted cash: thinking I might need him again for Mrs Fowler – and this thought was quite horrifying, as if I was acknowledging some awful burden for ever – I said, ‘If you come around now I’ll give you cash.’ ‘Can do,’ said he. He arrived an hour later. He took the money, and stood waiting, and then, ‘Why isn’t she in a Home? She shouldn’t be living like that.’ I said, ‘She doesn’t want to go into a Home. She likes it where she is.’
Jim is a nice boy, not stupid. He was ashamed of what he was thinking, just as I am. He hesitated, and then said, ‘I didn’t know there were people still living like that.’
I said, worldly wise, the older experienced one, ‘Then you don’t know much.’
Still he lingered, troubled, ashamed, but insistent. ‘What’s the good of people that old?’ he said. And then, quickly, to cancel out what he had said, cancel what he was thinking, ‘Well, we’ll be old one of these days, I suppose. Cheers then!’
And went. It was delicacy that made him say, we’ll be old, not I’ll be old: because for him I am old, already.
And then I sat down and thought. What he said was what people do say: Why aren’t they in a Home? Get them out of the way, out of sight, where young healthy people can’t see them, can’t have them on their minds!
They are thinking – I have been thinking – I did think, what is the point of their being alive still?
And I thought, then, how do we value ourselves? By what? Work? Jim the electrician is all right, electricians are obviously category one – if you can get them to come at all. What about assistant editors of women’s magazines? Childless assistant editors? How about Joyce, editor, one daughter, who won’t speak to her, she says Joyce is beneath contempt for some reason or another, I forget; a son, difficult. I get so bored with these spoiled prima donnas, the teenagers.
How about Sister Georgie? Well, she’s all right, children, husband, good works. But how about Sister Georgie in fifteen years’ time? Statistically she’ll be a widow, children gone, she’ll be in a flat, no use to anyone. How will she be judged then?
How about my Freddie, if he had lived? A saint, no less, putting up with spoiled child-wife. But in fifteen years? I see the old men, lean and shadowy and dusty-looking, or fat and sagging and grey, going about the streets with their shopping, or standing at street corners, looking lost.
We are to judge people by their beautiful thoughts?
If