Vacant Possession

CHAPTER 4

“Anybody home?” No answer. That didn’t mean, of course, that the house was empty. Sylvia went into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of Perrier water, and took it upstairs. Alistair’s door was still shut. She felt sticky and grimy from the plastic chairs in the committee room, the car’s vinyl upholstery, the dust that hung in the air. Other people’s tobacco smoke had got into her lungs.

She peeled off her clothes, shrugged her towelling robe on, and made for the bathroom. She thought she heard a rustle behind Alistair’s door. “Are you in there?” she said. “Alistair, if you don’t come out soon I’m going to kick this door in.” There was no reply. She didn’t mean it, of course; it was just the small change of domestic violence. She locked herself in the bathroom, took a brisk shower, then scrubbed her face with a soapy substance full of little bits of grit. Exfoliation, she said to herself. How she wished she could really shed her skin, and shed the past with it, dispose of that embarrassing image in the photographs of ten years ago. She had heard of people trying to “purge themselves of their past.” The images employed seemed to become more nasty and drastic the more you thought about it. Exorcism…the exfoliation procedure had left her face blotchy and scored with little red lines. She stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. All right, do it, she thought. Find that other old photograph and throw it out. Why today? Well, why not? As murderers often find after years of wishful thinking, the action of a second can free you from the weight of a decade.

She went into the bedroom and opened Colin’s top drawer. A tangle of underwear, and socks he never wore, rolled into balls, fraying round the tops. A colour film, some small change, some bottles of aftershave; most of it bought by Florence, gentle hints from the year when Colin had decided to grow a beard. It hadn’t lasted long, the beard. Nothing lasted long with Colin; the enthusiasms he took up at evening classes, his project for growing vegetables, his ardour for joining the Social Democratic Party—which had fizzled out, come to think of it, when he couldn’t find a stamp to send off his application form. Only his neckties evoked constancy. What was this greasy grey string, left over from the last time ties were narrow? Here was a yellow knitted one, and here was a great flowery orange thing, a relic of the sixties. Dear God. Kipper ties, they called them.

She heard the front door bang.

“Mum? Mum, it’s me, Claire, I’m home.”

“All right, Claire,” she called. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Mum, can I get waffles out of the freezer?”

“Get what you like. I won’t be long.”

With a sudden urgency, she began to rummage through the drawer. Here at the back was the five-year diary that she had once given Colin for Christmas. It was not locked; its key was still taped to it, in a tiny polythene envelope. Colin had never filled the diary in. He considered, he told her, that he had no life worth recording, and to be sure that he was right, she had checked every few months and found the pages blank. He could have filled it in, she thought, after I took such trouble to get it for him. Being a history teacher you’d think he’d like to keep a record. She felt she would like to make sense of the past; of those white years, 1975, 1976, ’77, ’78, ’79. Where had they gone? She had a mental picture of an autumn evening, the year they had moved to Buckingham Avenue; Colin sulking in the garden, refusing to come in though it was getting cold and dark. He hated the sight of me, she thought, he would have left me for two pins; it was only after Claire was born that he calmed down. Presumably his affair was over by then. Something was missing afterwards, as if a large part of his vitality had been drained away. At times she caught him watching her. He looked like someone staring out of a famine poster; preternaturally wise, still, and lacking in a future that was of interest to anybody.

Here it was: a crumpled snapshot under his oldest socks. Its presence there was a tacit admission. He must know that she went through his drawers at intervals; after twenty years he was familiar with her methods of keeping one step ahead. He was not one of those self-contained men who can keep their love affairs a secret. He was one of those pathetic, guilty men, whose deepest need is to be found out.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, switched on the bedside light, and held the photograph under it. She had done all this before, at intervals separated by months when the knowledge that he still kept the picture would nibble away at her complacency, like a woodworm in furniture. Staring and staring didn’t give you any more information. She was young and slim, the girlfriend; woollen hat and scarf, boots, hands thrust into the pockets of a rather anonymous jacket. She leaned against the offside wing of the family Fiat, the one they had got rid of in 1976. Dark hair, shadowy eyes; the effortful smile was like Colin’s own. There was a dim backdrop of leafless trees.

Perhaps she was a teacher. Who else did he meet? Sylvia sucked her lip, brooding. A second later she leaped from the bed in alarm. Her heart pounded; a jangling scream split the air. She tore out of the room, yelled down at her daughter below. “Claire, for God’s sake stop that cooker timer!”

“What?”

“Push the knob in, make it stop, it’s driving me spare.”

The noise stopped. “I didn’t set it off,” Claire called up indignantly.

“Who did then?”

“Alistair.”

“Don’t be daft, he’s in his bedroom.”

Slowly she made her way back, clutching the photograph. Time’s up, she thought sourly. Life’s solid all through, done to a turn, a little bit longer and we’ll smell burning. She took a deep breath, trying to control the thumping behind her ribs.

“Mum, are you coming?”

Claire was whining from the foot of the stairs. “In a second.” She picked up the photograph she had discarded earlier, the one of herself from the family album. She held up the two for comparison. Her hands shook a little. No wonder he preferred the young girl; for a time, anyway. Date for date they matched. Winter 1974; summer, 1975. I’d know her anywhere, she thought; I’d know her right away. She ripped the photographs through and slipped them into the pocket of her jeans, meaning to drop them in the kitchen bin when no one was looking.

CONFESSIONS etc. (2)

“…that very strange people do congregate. They find each other out and form ghettos. The inadequate personality, the incipient schizophrenic, they feel under threat. Their identity is precarious and human relationships threaten to overwhelm them. But even when a person is totally alienated the need for minimal human contact is still there. So tramps live under bridges, and derelicts in common lodging houses.”

Isabel put down her pen. She wasn’t making headway. Whenever she tried to express herself, jargon got in the way. Years ago, she had been to an evening class to improve her writing skills. It didn’t seem to have improved them. It had been pointless.

And yet, not quite. It was at the writing class that she’d met her Married Man. Everybody has one; you have to meet them somewhere. Colin hadn’t taken the course very seriously. He’d sat there, looking about him, smirking at people’s efforts. They’d gone to the pub after the class and he’d asked her to run away with him. She’d thought he was joking. At first.

Her mind wandered as she tried to put events in order. Her Confessions kept straying off the point. I’ll make an outline, she thought, and work from that.

“AXON: The records are lost/inconsistent/have gaps in them. So many different workers have been on the case. By the time it got to me it was nearly hopeless.

THEN: for months at a time I couldn’t get into the house.

WHEN I DID Mrs. Axon locked me in a bedroom.

WHILE I WAS IN THE BEDROOM—”

She hesitated, then wrote: “MRS. AXON DIED.”

“I could have done better.

“But I made a mess of it.

“Why?

“Because I was frightened.

“Why?

“The fact is I couldn’t keep my personal life straight. There was this awful problem of Colin, I didn’t know what to do about him, he was so emotional, he seemed to need me so much, but I didn’t have anything left over from my work to give to anybody. Everything was a problem, job/Colin/home.”

I can’t send it to the newspapers like this, she thought crossly, I’ll have to tidy it up, there are times I wish I’d never, but no, don’t say that; what a relief it will be when it’s done.

“At that time my father had just retired. (He was in banking, like my husband, and that’s why I went into it when I left social work, I thought it was safe.) He was always in his room, doing his hobbies, or so I thought. In fact he was doing much worse. He used to sneak off and pick up women, old women, awful women, the kind of woman who sleeps rough. It was all he could get, I suppose. He wasn’t very prepossessing himself. He said he was lonely.

“He used to meet them in the launderette or at the park, or in the bus station café. He used to buy them cups of tea. They’d be grateful. They didn’t mind doing it out of doors, even in cold weather. He used to come home with clay on the knees of his trousers. I didn’t know what to do.

“He started bringing them home, and I was frantic in case the neighbours found out. For me, in my position…He could have caught something, a disease. He could be getting them pregnant, they weren’t all old. There I was, telling other people how to run their lives. I used to hide his glasses. He could hardly see without them; but I think he used to get out, all the same.

“And then the day came when I did get into the Axon house. There was something funny about the way Muriel looked, and the way her mother talked; as if they were carrying on some elaborate piece of acting, and as if I couldn’t see what was right under my nose. Her mother said Muriel had been out of the house. ‘On the razzle’ was the expression she used.

“I went away and the picture of Muriel remained in my mind, sitting, lumpen, her face downcast, in her peculiar blue smock made out of some kind of furnishing fabric. At first it didn’t occur to me that she might be pregnant. I only saw her, in my mind, ambling through the park, or drinking tea out of a paper cup down at the bus station. It occurred to me, as I ran down the Axons’ front path; and now, all these years later, the thought wakes me up in the middle of the night.

“I didn’t report my suspicion. I didn’t do anything. I cleared off and left the Axons to their own devices. I didn’t go back to the house until I absolutely had to, and by that time Muriel (if she’d really been pregnant) had already given birth. What happened to the baby? Was it a boy or a girl? I think I read somewhere that babies’ corpses often mummify, and turn up years later, uncannily preserved.”

She stopped writing. It didn’t seem very coherent. There was so much that only made sense in the light of her state of mind at the time, and no doubt she had been over-imaginative. That was a fault of hers.

She took a clean sheet of paper and wrote on it,

“I think my husband is having an affair. I don’t know who she is and I hope I don’t find out. I like deceiving myself. It is comfortable. It is the House Speciality.”

Perhaps I should have a drink, she thought. My style leaves something to be desired and perhaps after a drink it would improve. Perhaps a drink would help her to see the connection between things, the connections she sensed and sought. There was no gin, so she had whisky. She wasn’t fussy these days. Alcohol takes you to the heart; you see the True Nature of Events.

There was a feeling of circular motion. It was not entirely the effect of the Scotch on an empty stomach. Here she was, back in town. Here she was, the Wronged Wife; she’d once been the Other Woman. It is a progression people make, but she didn’t see that. Her situation seemed special, sinister, ensnaring. Funny that it’s only after ten years things seem to fit together.

What I need, Colin thought, is a large gin and tonic.

“Anybody home?” No answer. He dropped his jacket—he had not worn it all day—on the chair in the hall, and went into the living room. “Why doesn’t anybody let a bit of air in around here?” He swung open the french windows that looked over the garden. Ought to spray for blackfly this weekend, he thought. He turned to the wall units and opened a cupboard gingerly; he could not trust the door to stay in place, having constructed the units himself last summer with the help of screwdriver provided and simple instructions in Japanese. He held the gin bottle up for inspection; it was a quarter full, so he poured himself a measure into a tumbler which came to hand and, picking it up, set off for the kitchen to look for ice and tonic. There would be lemons, for sure; there were always lemons around Sylvia. She cooked them and squeezed them and ate them and rubbed them on her elbows, like the Esquimaux using up every part of the beast. He found a drop of tonic in a bottle at the back of the fridge. It looked flat. He shook it and watched it fizz, then opened the freezer. There was something like raspberry jam all over the ice cubes. He sighed, slid out the tray, and took it to the sink. He twisted it and nothing happened, so he hammered it against the stainless steel for a while, looking out of the kitchen window; he twisted it again, and the ice cubes flew out and fell into the sink with a clatter. He picked up a couple, pursuing them as they shot away from his fingers, and ran them under the tap to try to get the jam off; before long the ice and water were indistinguishable, and both were running through his fingers.

“Hello, Dad,” said Claire, coming in. “What are you washing the ice cubes for?”

“Because somebody, I don’t say who, has been smearing jam all over the place.”

“It must have been Alistair.”

“It’s funny that he put it round your mouth too, isn’t it?”

“Is this your drink?” Claire put her forefinger into his tumbler and licked it. “Yuk, that’s horrible.”

“Watch out, you’ll have jam in it.”

“I tell you what, Dad, I could make you some tea.”

“This will do me nicely, Claire. If you’ll take your fingers out of it, I’ll have it without the ice.”

“You could have tea as well. I’ve got my forms for Brownies.”

“Perhaps later, pet. Where is Alistair, is he still upstairs?”

“No, I saw him with Austin. They’re in the churchyard.”

“Oh yes, what are they doing? Exhuming somebody?”

“What’s that?”

“Digging up bodies. Really, Claire, we’ll have to do something about your vocabulary.”

“No, stupid, they weren’t digging up bodies. They were singing. They’ve got some beer.”

“Really, at this time of day?”

“They’ve not got a bottle opener, so they’re knocking the tops off on the gravestones. They wouldn’t let me do it.”

“I wonder what the vicar would have to say.”

“About what?” Sylvia asked, trundling in with the laundry basket. She stared at him. “Drinking?”

“Yes. Why not? Would you like to join me?”

“Why are you saying that?” She stopped dead, eyeing him. “As if we were in a TV play. As if I were some other woman.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I only asked—”

“There must be at least three hundred calories in that. Is it Slimline Tonic or not?”

“It’s flat anyway,” Colin said. Its momentary sparkle had subsided by the time he emptied it into his glass. “I can make up for it if I go carefully over the weekend.”

“Very likely; when Florence comes round with shortbread on Sunday afternoon and gets into a state if you don’t eat it.”

“Well, perhaps I could just have one piece, and hope she’ll take it in good part. Would you pass me a knife for my lemon, please? Besides, you know, if you want the honest truth—”

“If I want the honest truth, I suppose I’ll go begging.”

“Sylvia, what is this?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m not really interested in losing any more weight.”

“You’ll regret it,” she sang. She moved across the kitchen towards him, trying to lighten her tone.

“Mum,” said Claire, “you shouldn’t carry a knife with the pointy side like that, it’s dangerous.”

“It’s called a blade, Claire,” Sylvia said calmly. “You’ll regret it when you go off to the squash club, and collapse and die.”

“You’re not allowed to die at my squash club,” Colin said. He took the knife and stuck it in his lemon. “It’s like the Palace of Westminster, no one is allowed to expire within the precincts. They’d run you outside and leave you on the pavement.”

“It’s hardly a thing to joke about, in front of Claire.”

“Claire might laugh.” Colin stood with the slice of lemon poised on the blade of his knife. “I know you won’t. Humour’s not your strong point, is it?”

“When did you start hating me?” Sylvia asked. “I’d like to know. Can you remember what year it was? When did you start hating me, and when, if ever, did you stop?”

Colin turned away, letting his slice of lemon fall on the counter top. He could not imagine what had prompted this. The photograph of his former mistress lay snugly under his wife’s pelvic bone, the bleak little face staring at the lining of her pocket. A bluebottle alighted on his glass and walked slowly and purposefully round the rim.

The hospital where Mrs. Wilmot worked was named not for St. Luke, the physician, but for the tax collector, St. Matthew. Its main building, within the memory of many of its patients—memories most acute for their early lives—had been the union workhouse. It still looked like a workhouse, grey and draughty, with its high ceilings and stained walls. In the part of the building which was now taken over by offices, you could still see the old wooden benches, built with a ridge in their backs so that the paupers would not lounge about and get too comfortable. Its general air was so depressing, its inmates so futureless, and its corridors so drab that even though the area unemployment rate was 16 per cent, the hospital could not keep its staff. They could not live, they found, with the prospect of what was in store for them.

The wards here did not have interesting names, just letters. The best patients were in C Ward; the worst were in A. Perhaps this psychological ploy was meant for the staff, for the patients were beyond encouragement.

The Staff Nurse called out to Poor Mrs. Wilmot as she trailed in: “Hello there, love. Would you mind mopping up after Mrs. Anderson? She’s had an accident.”

“Course, I don’t have to.” She took her coat off and laid it over a chair. “Course, I’m entitled to a nurse to do that. Course, I don’t mind.”

“Oh, you are a brick, Mrs. Wilmot,” Staff said. “I don’t know where we’d be without you.”

The ward smelled; not of its incontinent patients, but of what was almost worse, disinfectant, air freshener, talcum powder, drug-induced sleep. And now of food; the dinner trolley rolled in, purées and mashes under their metal covers.

Staff took up a bowl, and perched on the edge of a bed.

“Try this potato, love,” she urged, forking it appetisingly.

Her patient rolled her head away and puckered her mouth. Mrs. Anderson lay huddled in the next bed, no movement except for her breathing, in out, in out. Why did she bother, Staff wondered. She never spoke or moved. Neither did Mrs. Sidney, in the bed beyond; nothing at all, except from time to time a peevish flicker of her sunken eyes. The ladies of A Ward were so old, so sick, so far away; they clung to the very fringes of human existence, to the outer edge of whatever could be taken for sentient and separate life. Their shrunken bodies hardly disturbed the sheets, their tiny skulls on the pillows were no bigger than grapefruits. Yet Mrs. Sidney was not so old, really; one in twenty people over sixty-five suffered from senile dementia, and she had been lying in this bed when she should have been a spry old pensioner going off to the shops with a bus pass and a basket on wheels. She’d been on A Ward (Female) for eight years; Staff had been on it for eight weeks. She didn’t know how much longer she’d last. Even C Ward was better, where sixty old ladies sat round the day room, fastened into their highchairs, and chattered at each other, occasionally wept, and sometimes threw things. The A Wards, conveniently, were closer to the mortuary; few left by any other route. But I’ll leave, Staff thought; I’ll get myself to a coronary care unit, where I’ll meet a stressed executive: and soon I’ll be a bride. She dreamed of it, when she dozed on night duty; instead of a train she wore a stiff white sheet, with the monogram of the Area Health Authority in red on a tape by the hem.

“Don’t feed Mrs. Sidney,” she said, looking up. “I want to keep her tidy. She’s expecting visitors tonight.”

She gave up on Mrs. Anderson’s neighbour and dropped the plastic spoon into the bowl. She went to the end of Mrs. Sidney’s bed and stood looking at her. It was plain that she was expecting nothing; except death. After some time had passed, Mrs. Sidney acknowledged her with one serpentine blink. “You know you’re going to be moved, don’t you, Mrs. Sidney? Are you listening? You do know what’s going on?”

Expect a mummy to answer you, Staff thought. Expect Tutankhamun to boogie into the sluice. The old lady stared through her as if her solid bulk were gauze. “Want me to comb her hair?” Mrs. Wilmot said. “Course, perhaps you want the student to do it?”

“I wouldn’t bother,” Staff said. “She’s got so little of it left, and wouldn’t it be just our luck if today’s the day it falls out entirely? You know what relatives are. Still, they’re very good. Second time in eight weeks. They were phoned up about her move. Not that she knows them. Pointless really.”

“Pointless,” Mrs. Wilmot agreed. “Course, walls have ears, don’t they? So she might be able to tell what you say.”

“I do sometimes wonder,” Staff said. “I do sometimes wonder what goes through her head, staring and blinking, blinking and staring all day long. You wonder what goes through any of their heads.”

“Course, you’d think they’d cure them.”

“Oh, there’s no cure.” She’d tell anybody; anybody who came on her ward. “There’s no cure for the march of time. I wonder what her son will say, about moving her. They’ll be here any minute, I expect.”

“Well, I’ll just look in on the gentlemen,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “Seeing as I’m here, seeing as I’m done for now.” She dragged off across the corridor at her usual abject pace, her eyes downcast. “Spread a cheery word,” she said.

Coming upstairs—they were the only visitors around—Colin said to Sylvia, “Could you just give me some idea of what this is about? I come home, pour myself a drink, and you start in on me.”

“Nothing,” Sylvia said, balefully.

“There must be something. I mean, there must be something that set you off.”

A silent car ride lay behind them. He combed through the day’s words and events to find something that could have offended Sylvia, and yet he was conscious that she was not so much offended as sad and puzzled, floundering in a morass of unwelcome thoughts. He knew the signs; he could diagnose them in other people. “Perhaps it’s the prospect of visiting my mother,” he said. “Is it? I’d have come alone.”

Sylvia didn’t answer. She had never let him come alone. When they reached the ward, she said, as she always did, “The smell.” He said, as always, “I expect you get used to it.”

She felt self-conscious, in her outdoor clothes, and in her shoes which made such a noise. Walking down the ward beside Colin was like walking down the aisle; heads turned, to pin you with a judgemental stare, and suddenly you were large and clumsy and you felt your face going red. Here they were at the altar, this shrouded stonelike object. They stopped at the foot of the bed.

“Hello, Mum,” Colin said in a loud voice. There was a sudden little movement from the patients all along the ward, as if they were joined by an electric wire from bed to bed. It subsided; they were still, mute. Mrs. Sidney had not joined the demonstration. Would she blink or would she not, was the question.

Sylvia sighed. “I’ll get us two chairs,” she said. She crossed the ward. She felt that the deaf watched her, that the blind heard her pass; she was an intrusion, a big woman blown in from the outside, her body glowing with its self-conceits. The Staff Nurse came up. It was the one with the overshot jaw, the red-faced woman who’d been here last time.

“How are we?”

“Fine, fine.”

“You know doctor wants to move her?”

“Hardly seems any point.”

“The thing is, off B Ward, they sometimes go home.”

Sylvia’s eyebrows shot up.

“Oh, not in this condition. But if she showed signs, you know…the fact is, they want to close this place down, and anybody they can get out, they will get out; because although we’re having a new geriatric unit at the General, we’re not going to have enough beds.”

“But look at her. She’s not showing signs, is she?”

“No, well, but the doctor must think she is. Course, I’m not saying it could happen. I mean, if she shaped up a bit, started to feed herself, she could go on C Ward. Sit in the day room and watch the telly. It’d be more of a life for her. Know what I mean?”

“But that’s ludicrous,” Sylvia said. “There’s as much chance of her sitting up and watching telly as there is of you winning Miss World.”

“Well, you never know,” the Staff Nurse said rather huffily. “We have to try and hold out some hope, you know. Otherwise we’d all do ourselves in, wouldn’t we? Shall I take those flowers?”

She strode off, stiff-armed, holding the bunch well away from her apron. Sylvia dragged the chairs over to Colin. He was leaning over his mother now, his expression intent. “You know,” he said, “you know, really, I think she might be a bit better. I think there was just a flicker of something, I think I caught it in her eyes as I bent over her.”

“Oh, Colin.” She dumped the chair. “You’ve been saying that for years.”

“I expect you’re right.” He sat down heavily. “But you’re the one who always brings her flowers.”

“It would look so mean if we didn’t. What would they think?”

They conversed in whispers. It would be just like every other visit; they would sit for twenty minutes, a length of time which seemed respectable, and then they would put their chairs back by the wall and walk away, Sylvia first, Colin two paces behind her. At the swing doors they would pause and look back, and find it difficult to distinguish the little hump of bedding that was Mrs. Sidney from all the others in the long silent row.

“Do you think she’ll know if they move her?” Sylvia asked.

“I can’t see how. I mean, she doesn’t seem to notice her surroundings, does she?”

“She used to be in that bed. Over in the corner.”

“Yes. Then she moved two beds up, didn’t she? That was in 1979.”

“Of course, I don’t suppose she had a change of bed really. I expect it’s the same bed, and they just wheel them.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

They fell silent.

“It would be a big change,” Colin said, after a while. “Moving down the corridor. Think, I mean, if you’d been on the same spot since 1979. Moving down the corridor would be like me getting a job in Port Stanley.”

“Why Port Stanley?”

“I don’t know—I mean anywhere foreign and a long way off, that would be a big upheaval. Why are you so obtuse? I always have to explain myself.”

“Then why are you so obscure?” Sylvia whispered. “You say things without rhyme or reason. Please don’t start a row in public. You embarrass me.”

“It’s hardly public.” He turned and looked around the ward.

“Don’t stare at them. They’re not all cabbages. Some of them have feelings left.”

“Sorry.” Colin readjusted his gaze, returning it to his knees. Another silence fell. Sylvia looked at her watch.

“Go in a minute, shall we?”

“Okay.” Colin eased back his chair on its rubber feet. Another visit was coming to its close. “I expect she’ll—” He broke off. “Sylvia?” he said. “She moved.”

“What?” Alarmed, Sylvia stood up. “Where? Where did she move?”

“Her hand, I thought…just a twitch.” He had jumped up too and now leaned eagerly over his mother. “Hello, Mum, can you hear me? Are you there?”

“Of course she’s there,” Sylvia said. “What a daft question. Where do you think she is? Hong Kong?”

“Why Hong Kong?” Colin straightened up. The old lady was not even blinking. Her no-colour eyes, which had once been hazel, stared straight at the opposite wall. Her skin had turned to leather, though she had never been the outdoor type; her mouth was only a crack, wide over long-empty gums. Colin thought he could see, buried in the crinkled folds of her neck, a pulse beating; there, just over the top button of her nightdress.

“Well, I should hope so,” said Sylvia, when he pointed this out. “She must have a pulse, mustn’t she?”

“I think she’s excited. I think perhaps she’s heard what we’ve said about moving, and she’s excited.”

“I’m afraid that’s wishful thinking. What is it to get excited about?”

“Perhaps we ought to tell the nurse.” They stood over her for another minute, watching her. “I daresay you’re right,” Colin said at last. “I must have imagined it.”

“Come on.” Sylvia touched his elbow. “Don’t upset yourself.”

He felt almost heartened, at this tender gesture from her. Possibly she did care about his feelings; possibly he was something more to her than a household object, at her disposal. Oh, the relentless optimism of the man! He squeezed her hand. “Why don’t we stop off on the way home? Have a drink, just unwind a bit? It is the end of term.”

“I don’t want to be out when Suzanne gets home, she’ll wonder where we are. I don’t know what she’s coming for, I didn’t expect her till the weekend. She sounded funny on the phone.”

“Oh, she’ll fend for herself,” Colin said, “there’s food in the fridge. It’s probably boyfriend trouble.”

“Could be.”

“You know how it is, first year away from home. She has to learn to stand on her own two feet. I remember when I first went off to university—”

“Shut up!”

“What?”

“Shut up,” Sylvia said. “Stand still. Watch her.” She leaned forward, her eyes fixed on the figure in the bed, her tongue between her teeth; as if she were defusing a bomb. “She did move,” she said quietly. “You were right.”

“Well, thank you,” Colin said. At once his indignation evaporated; sobered and awestruck, he stared at the old lady. Slowly, fractionally, the walnut head was moving; drooping on the chest.

They held their breaths. For a long moment Mrs. Sidney rested, looking up slyly from under her eyelids. You were told I was showing signs, her expression seemed to say. A stiff broken-winged flutter brought her arms to her sides. Knobbled, stick-thin; the wasted muscles remembered leverage. Fraction by fraction she rose upright in the bed.

“Here, Mrs. Wilmot!” the nurse called. “Come and look at this!” She waddled off down the ward in the direction of the men’s block. “Come here, Mrs. Wilmot!”

Sylvia gripped Colin’s hand. Minutes passed by the ward clock. There were times when she seemed to stick, but there were times when, comparatively, she seemed to hurtle. Finally the sheet fell away. Nothing but a nightgown of yellow winceyette held in the old lady’s bones, but her face had become animated, lips twitching, eyes opened wide.

“She’s going to speak,” Colin said excitedly. He dropped Sylvia’s hand and leaned over his mother. Mrs. Sidney’s expression was congested with effort, her jaws moving as if years of chit-chat were banking up in her throat. “Again?” Colin said. “Again, Mum, try again.”

“What did she say?” Sylvia demanded.

“I don’t know.” Colin steadied himself with a hand on the bed. “Something about a house. Bleak House? Buck House? Can’t be, can it?”

“There’s no sense in that, Colin.”

“You want sense as well? Come on, Mum, speak up, try again.”

Here was Nurse, bustling back, the old ward orderly padding behind her. “Can you credit it?” Nurse said. “And I didn’t believe Dr. Furness when he said she was coming to. Mind you, praise where praise is due, Mrs. Wilmot here has spent hours with your mum, just talking to her, like, just tidying out her locker and making her feel she’s wanted. It’s the personal touch, that’s what it is.”

Mrs. Sidney turned her head. “She’s doing great,” the nurse said. “Here’s your son, Mrs. Sidney,” she bawled. “Here’s your son and daughter-in-law. Here’s Mrs. Wilmot. You know Mrs. Wilmot, don’t you?”

In the depth of cloudy irises, something moved; a chance, a stray, a fugitive thought. Her mouth trembled. Gaze kindled. Slow, dilute tears rolled out of her eye. “Colin?” Quivering lips moved around his name.

“Oh, Mum, speak again,” Colin said. His voice cracked with emotion.

“She recognises you,” the nurse said.

“And me,” said the old lady called Wilmot. “She recognises me, don’t you, lovey?”

Mrs. Sidney’s head twisted towards the new voice. She stared. Something darkened behind her eyes, quite suddenly, as if a blind had been pulled down. “She’s gone again,” the nurse said, disappointed. “Stay where you are, though. You never know.”

They stood, frozen, waiting for her to move again. Presently she did so; not speaking, but raising her right hand in a rigid, almost regal, wave.

Over on B Block (Male) Mr. Philip Field sat in a side ward, planning his funeral. He was hesitating, for the tenth time, between “The Lord’s My Shepherd” and “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.” Was not the latter more often sung at weddings? He couldn’t recall the tune. He’d had a stroke—or so they said—and there was much he couldn’t recall. If only his daughter were here, she might be able to help him out. They could have a singsong. It would be like old times. His wife, who had deserted him years ago, had played the piano.

Isabel might come more, now that she’d moved back to town. But he doubted it. She was sick herself, she said; instead she’d send that wimpish husband of hers. Isabel was a champion at prevarication, at excuses; at giving you what you didn’t want, long after you’d forgotten you’d asked. What good was Ryan? He was a banker, but he didn’t want to talk about banking practice. He said it was all different now. He just sat there fidgeting, cracking his silly jokes. The only money he was interested in was the money his wife’s father was going to leave him.

They disapproved of him, that was it. He was a man who in his time had gone in for a bit of honest fun. With the wife gone, it was a case of having to; he’d had urges. What do you go for nowadays, he asked Ryan, sniggering. Key parties? He wanted the details. Ryan looked po-faced; as if he were turning someone down for a loan.

But he watched his son-in-law watching the young nurses. Ryan was a hypocrite, he decided.

Some days he thought he’d be leaving this godforsaken place; some days he knew he wouldn’t. Bits of his body—a hand, a leg—seemed to have developed a will of their own. Scraps of memory, detached from their moorings in the far past, floated up to occupy the forefront of his brain. This seemed a bad sign. He was determined to leave his affairs in order; that included the disposition of his remains. After all, he knew Isabel. She couldn’t seem to function these days without a drink inside her; and after she’d had a drink, she would forget what she was doing and lose the undertaker’s number.

Accordingly, he had sent to a selection of funeral directors for their prospectus and terms. He had half-hoped a representative would call. In the United States, they would have called. They knew the meaning of service. Not that he had truck with foreign methods, in general; but he remembered how, in Paris once as a young man, he’d been impressed by the high seriousness of the undertaking business, by the Pompes Funèbres on every street, their windows draped with black velvet and stuck over with specimen Mass cards and plans of family vaults. Ah, Paris…He lay back against his pillow. It was clear that Isabel would not be coming in tonight. He closed his eyes; all in a moment, his fancies passed from the lugubrious to the lubricious. Furtively, he touched himself under the sheet. Nothing doing. But give it time. He’d have something to show the little student nurse, a lovely surprise for her when she came to tuck in his sheets.

Everything was going along nicely when the door opened. He flicked open one eye to appraise his visitor. It was an old woman, an orderly, a downcast and shrunken personage; hardly meat for his fantasies. He gave her no encouragement, merely closed his eyes again, and went on with what he was doing. But she continued to come in, intruding her woebegone form around the door; she stood over the bed, looking down with her lacklustre eyes, and forced him to take notice of her.

“You’re interrupting me,” he told her. “I want to be left alone. If you’re looking for my tray, the male nurse took it.”

She didn’t seem to have heard him. She walked to the foot of the bed and picked up his charts.

“Hands off,” he shouted. “That’s confidential. Doctors only.”

“I thought it was you, Mr. Field.”

As he looked at her, a change seemed to come over her. Her bony shoulders straightened. She grew by an inch or two, and her melancholic manner fell away. The years fell away too; it was 1974, she was a girl alone, on a go in the park, and a lonely old gentleman was hanging around by the swings. Muriel grinned at him.

“Hello, old cock,” she said.