Olga woke me in the night and said I had to take her to hospital. I rang Suzannah who came with her army car. We took Olga to hospital, and I asked Suzannah to go back and be with the children. Olga was taken to a little room off one of her own wards. There were a lot of bright lights, and doctors and nurses. She said to the chief doctor, Please don't... meaning, don't give me drugs. He works under her usually. He took her hand and smiled and nodded, and nodded at the other doctors and nurses and they all went out and left me with Olga. She was very tired. Her face was grey. Her lips were white. She made a movement with her hand and I held it. She was looking at me from a very long way off. I could see that it was all she could do to breathe. She said, in a loud sudden voice, Rachel. I waited, and waited, and waited. The bright lights battering down. Then she smiled, a real smile, so I knew she was going to die at once, and she said, Well Rachel... in a friendly sort of way. Then she stopped breathing. I closed her eyes after a bit. Before that she had been looking at me. So it seemed. I stayed with her until she was cold. I did not feel any grief because it did not seem to be indicated. Anyway, I don't believe in death. And anyway, I wished I was with her. Then I called a nurse in, and said that if there were any documents to sign, I would have to, because now I was the only member of the family left here. They gave me a cup of coffee and brought me a form to sign. Then I walked home. It was light by then. Suzannah was asleep on the sofa in the living room. That made me like her, because there were six empty beds she could have put herself in. She did not fuss or say anything silly, but made me more coffee and then got the children up and gave them breakfast. We sat together in the kitchen, and I told them that Olga had died, and that I would look after them. And Suzannah too, they asked? And of course I said, Yes. It seemed completely the right thing to say this.
I have seen that of course George will marry Suzannah. How was it I didn't see that before? She is a member of the family already. She has been for a long time.
Now George and Benjamin have gone away and Mother and Father are dead, this fiat is full of space. I have put Kassim in George's room, and Leila in Benjamin's room. This is something very important for them. Before they have felt like refugees taken in. But now you can see they feel part of the family. I have given them jobs to do, like keeping the flat tidy, and shopping, and both Leila and Kassim can cook some things. I still haven't sent them to school. I don't know where or how. I have even thought of trying to find Hasan to ask him. Perhaps these children are important the way George was? For all I know Hasan is dead. Over and over again, you think of someone you haven't seen for a time, and then you hear: dead. George didn't leave instructions for the children except that I had to look after them. I cannot possibly teach them all they should know.
Last night Suzannah came for supper, in the way she does, her eyes saying she must be asked, but of course ready to leave in a moment if she isn't. As we were talking at supper, the subject of school came up. Suzannah is good at math, so she will give them lessons. Then she said she would take them sometimes with her to her job. She teaches physical culture and hygiene and diet and that sort of thing at one of the Youth Camps. I said No, I didn't want Leila and Kassim influenced by all that. I saw that both the children were looking amused in their polite way. Suzannah said, You must not overprotect these two. I always get furious, inwardly, when she says things. It is her manner. Everything she says has the same quality. Pushy. But it is a result of something I didn't undertand, because of not liking her. It is strength that makes her insist on what she thinks. She insists and is too loud because of her experiences. The usual bad ones. She has had to fight for everything. And so she does fight. She was a refugee. She has never even known her real name. The Camp administrator called her Suzannah. She has not had any name but that. She was for six years in a girls' Camp. She taught herself all kinds of things in the Camp. She got the helpers who knew math and hygiene and diet etc. to teach her. She fought her way out.
Suzannah was going to her job as it happens this morning and it would have been sensible to ask her to stay the night. I didn't. I wanted to but I couldn't make myself. I felt taken over by her. So she went home, leaving just in time for the curfew. I felt guilty. When I was helping the children to go to bed, Kassim said, Rachel, are you trying to protect me and Leila from things we have already experienced? I don't know very much about them. I don't ask them, because it must be painful, and if George did tell me I wasn't listening. Perhaps they want to talk about it and I don't let them. I will but give me time.
People are always coming here asking for George but not nearly so much. Like a stream's steady current suddenly reducing its flow. And that makes me wonder. For everything has always seemed so haphazard, the people coming, and how they came, it always being so difficult, but now he is not here, only a few come. I am being careful. Benjamin said I must be on the lookout for informers and spies. How do I know when a person is a spy? I have been left to manage much more than I can. I must be making bad mistakes I suppose.
Yesterday Raymond Watts came. Of course I am careful of him. But why is he still here? George was always telling people to go here and go there, but he didn't tell anyone to stay here. Late in the evening some boys from Holland came in. They got here in the usual crazy way, hit and miss. Suzannah was here. She made a sign at me and beckoned me outside. Of course they saw this. I suppose she imagined that they didn't. She "whispered" to me that I should be careful of them. They heard, because they left at once. I asked Suzannah how she knew. She said, When one has had certain experiences, one senses these things. So I asked her about Raymond Watts, and she said, Oh he is all right now.
Raymond Watts came again. I have seen that he is in love with me. Well, if he wants to waste his time. He was talking about things, and I heard he was a schoolteacher in England. I asked him how long he would be here, and he said, Six months, unless fate was kind, meaning me I suppose, and so I asked him to give Leila and Kassim lessons.
Last night Suzannah was here because she had taken the children to her Camp with her, and made them help her with her work, and then she taught them math, and then she had supper. Then I made myself ask her to stay the night. I put her in Father's and Mother's room. She was nearly collapsing with emotion. Well, so was I. She has a little box of a room on the edge of the town where the sand is in drifts right up to the door and mangy dogs roam about. The room is too hot for her to be in at all in the afternoons. It is quite like the little mud room I loved so much, but the house doesn't have a court with a pool, and she doesn't have a roof to sleep out on. This morning I said to her it would be sensible if she moved in here. I didn't do it nicely, I am afraid, but I did it, so I suppose that is something. I know she is going to start throwing her weight around, but she won't even see anything wrong in it, and there is nothing I can do, and I know it isn't important.
When I put Kassim in George's room, I told him I would clear out the cupboards for him and today I did. I brought George's things into my room. He never has had much in the way of clothes, so what there was left here went in with mine. Of course I could not help crying. I miss him so much I ache all day and all night. I miss Benjamin too, strange as it might seem. I don't miss Olga and Simon much. That is because they had gone so far away before they died. What I do miss is what I can remember of them when I was little. But that is stupid. And when I think of how tired they were, that makes me want to cry. But they wouldn't value that. Well, I don't value it either. I have given up worrying about me being childish. I have put George's papers in cartons. I found letters in his papers. I don't know if I should have read them or not, but I did. One was from his great love in India. All I can say is, she doesn't understand much about George. Also a letter from George to her, which he didn't send. She hasn't read it, but I have. So it seems to me, judging by results, that this letter was more for me than for her. I take it for granted that I am being dishonest.