‘For Hilary?’ I put incredulity into my voice.
Unable to speak, she nods.
I jump up. For reasons I don’t understand myself I’m quite ruthless. ‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous, Mum!’ One thing I am not going to do is be lured into her metaphysical scheme of things. ‘You should see a psychiatrist. You know that? It’s mad to think that kind of thing. Mad.’ ‘Dear George,’ she’s muttering. ‘Dear George, I feel you’re so near, yet so far.’ ‘No,’ I say, ‘the only thing you did wrong,’ and I spit the words out, ‘if you must know, was not getting Mavis thoroughly checked out. Okay? That’s all there is to it.’ And I’m stamping over to the drinks cabinet with at least a quadruple whisky in mind, when the phone rings.
‘I’m bringing her home,’ Shirley says.
I Will Hope
‘I’m bringing her home.’
‘What? She’s better?’
Shirley is urgent: ‘She’s dying. I think they’re trying to let her die here.’
I tell her not to be ridiculous.
‘We’ll need some oxygen. Apparently you can hire it. Check out the yellow pages.’
‘But Shirley.’
‘Do it. Now. I’ll be back in an hour or so. I’ll take a cab. I’ve already signed her out.’
‘Let me come and get you in the car.’
‘No. I’ve got to get out of here now. Please, George, get the oxygen.’
She hangs up.
Mother is blowing her nose, sorting out her eyes.
‘Shirley’s bringing her home,’ I say, rising as one does to the drama of the occasion. In fact, while things are dramatic, life’s generally plain sailing. I grab the yellow pages.
And so begins the great epic: the tiny baby running a high temperature, suppositories, constant changing of sheets, of clothes, of nappies, of dressings on her strange and butchered legs, constant forcing of bottles between clamped gums, followed by vomiting, contortions. Her skin is clammy with fever. She cries a shrill nagging cry. She fights, though ever more weakly, whenever she is touched in any part of her body, eyes almost always screwed tight, hotly red in the now wan wax yellow of her face. In her fits she will have respiratory crises which require the oxygen mask. An ear infection generates a constant flow of pus.
Grabbing a snack with Shirley in the early hours, perhaps the second night, or the third, while Mother watches over the girl, I say: ‘We should have left her in hospital. They have all the equipment there.’
The house breathes silently about us. A hundred and sixty grand’s worth now and going up around £50 a day. The kitchen curtains haven’t been drawn and the yellow overhead light is hard and cold on the marble black tomb slabs of the windowpanes. Shirley’s expensive pans are piled high in the sink. I stab at crumbs.
‘Perhaps they were right.’
Shirley doesn’t answer at once. She moves purposefully in jeans and tee-shirt, scrambling eggs. She is living in a constant state of nervous tension. She doesn’t have the ten-hour escape to the office and other people that I have. Her face is drawn, gleaming with excitement. But she seems much more present, more decided, more one particular facet of her character than in the listless weeks following the birth. She is resolved, as if she had decided once and for all what to do, who to be. With a quick firm gesture she pushes unwashed hair from her face.
‘Nobody,’ she says, ‘has the least reason for believing that Hilary will never think and speak and talk and laugh and sing. Why should we let her die?’
She is reasonable, sensible rather than aggressive, which makes it difficult to argue.
I say carefully: ‘You didn’t seem so concerned about her when she was born. I mean, a bit offhand and mechanical. Why the big change?’
She shrugs. She asks does she have to explain herself? She doesn’t know. She might just as well ask why I have suddenly stopped hoping, since I was so hopeful and busy seeing specialists before. Arranging the operation. Wasn’t I? And now I want her dead. That isn’t fair, I say. We listen to the faint ticking of a wall clock. Then she says: ‘I just want to see her smile again, you know. I rather fell in love with her when she smiled that day.’
Sitting down, she stares at me over the narrow table top. Our faces suddenly seem very close to each other and large. I notice her nose is too red. She is ageing.
I say: ‘Think of the pain she’s in. Going on and on and on. Day after day. That ear problem she has. Her legs. Life is nothing but pain for her. It’s unbearable even to think of.’
‘The thing about pain,’ she says, ‘is that when it’s over, it’s over. But not being a woman you wouldn’t know anything about that.’
‘Let’s not argue, Shirl.’
She smiles, stands up, leans over the table and kisses me. ‘You’ve been wonderful, all the staying up you’ve done. I would never have expected it of you.’
‘Oh thanks a lot.’
‘Your mother too. Fantastic. Mine hasn’t even come to visit.’
‘Mum’s in her element,’ I tell her. ‘She probably wishes it was twins,’ and we both laugh.
Day after day then, nursing this sick child in a fetid, claustrophobic, overheated, over-emotive atmosphere. Two weeks, three. All taking our turns, shift after shift. Even the Filipino girl, Lilly, who will burst into tears occasionally and say how helpful it has been to find people worse off than herself, people she can help, how grateful she is. Peggy comes often. And Charles amazingly, an hour or two here and there, mucking in. People never cease to surprise you. If he does care for us in some way, then he certainly fooled me. I wonder will he use the oxygen if and when the child has a crisis in his sole presence. The question floats across my mind as an intriguing curiosity. The little girl’s life hangs by the most snappable of threads. For myself, in the drama of our trance-like weary nights, I have decided I must be good as the rest, I must do everything possible to see the little girl through. I’m determined still to believe, or at least not one hundred per cent exclude, that she does have a chance. And while that is on the cards, I will, I will hope.
What a relief though when I go to work. Or to Susan’s. Four, five times now. She always serves something of a feast after we’ve made love — eggs and bacon and beer and ice-cream. Traditional, solid fare. It’s almost better than the sex. Coming home on the tube, I tear an article about euthanasia out of the Standard and slip it between the pages of a scrapbook I keep in my briefcase.
The Worst Betrayal of All
It’s a few days after Hilary comes through her fever, that Shirley breaks down. The little girl’s improvement is sudden and dramatic. The temperature falls, her breathing becomes even, and in the space of a few hours a bloom returns to her cheeks. We are euphoric. We open bottles of Oddbin’s Verduzzo, we talk about the future, we jubilantly call the hospital to fix an appointment for the next check-up. Except that with this apparent return to health, we notice that the child isn’t looking about her in the same way she did at two months, before the op. She seems unable to follow a finger, to see the teat of a bottle.
At the check-up, which a surprised consultant arranges almost at once, a paediatric optician is called and immediately confirms that Hilary is indeed not seeing. The eyes, he says, are perfectly okay in themselves, but not responding or focusing. Something in the brain. The consultant hopes, clearing his throat, fussing with a pen, that this will be a temporary ‘symptom’ due to post-operative trauma. ‘You should feel very proud of yourselves,’ he goes on quickly, ‘I honestly didn’t think the girl would survive.’