One day as I was leaving, Jeremy was also waiting for the lift. I was pleased he was there because its sequence of hums and clicks and whines, the little mechanical fanfare announcing my ejection from the ward for the night, sounded less lonely with someone beside me. Already I was missing the lulling hospital sounds: trolleys, soft treading feet, the swish of curtains drawn around beds. He stared at the lift doors, I studied him. His shoulders, but also something in his face, gave him a burdened air.
“Hi. Just off?” he said.
I nodded. He nodded back. “People often do find it difficult,” he said rather nicely. “I mean after.”
“After what?” I said, and he blushed.
The lift arrived and we travelled down. At the bottom he asked for my telephone number. Three days later he took me out for a drink and talked about himself. As I listened, I was thinking that even if burdened he looked, in the way doctors can, becalmed by responsibility. Despite the junior doctor pallor and slumped shoulders, he exuded enough certainty about life to deal with whatever might be waiting for me “after,” beyond the ward; he had a forward-going force that I knew I lacked. And he seemed an intrepid person-indeed the very practice of medicine was to me intrepid in itself: all those intimate, dreadful incursions into other people’s bodies, how did he ever dare? When he said that he intended to specialize in anaesthesia, I knew he wouldn’t let me feel a thing. It was the most seductive promise he could have made, to keep me benumbed.
What did I offer in return? Nothing really, of any visible value, perhaps nothing at all beyond my self as a prepared and willing surface for the marital textures of stasis and familiarity, an implicit pledge that I would spring no surprises. Two years later I entered marriage gratefully. It was like stepping into a clean white room whose door Jeremy held open and then closed quietly behind us.
For most of the rest of that night I drifted through Arthur’s house. Eventually I lay down on the sofa and drew in a long, stifling breath that made me wonder if I was taking in water rather than air, and indeed if I should not prefer to be drowning rather than falling asleep. It seemed that I was staring into dark water from a raft, alive but not quite rescued, and afloat slightly reluctantly. My eyes began to sting. I wanted Arthur with me.
THE COLD AND THE BEAUTY AND THE DARK
Chapter 13: Hospital Visiting
It seemed to Evelyn that Grace hardly spoke to her anymore. They had never found it easy to communicate but for the past four months, since Uncle Les had been in and out of hospital, first with a collapsed lung and pneumonia and then with what the doctors called “complications,” it had got worse. She could sense Grace turning away from her whenever she came into a room, she could feel how wide a berth she was given whenever she got up from her chair. If Grace was in the kitchen and Evelyn entered, Grace would leave. If Evelyn was there, Grace wouldn’t come in. It was if she could not have borne so much as an accidental brush of her mother’s hand. Evelyn longed for her hand to be touched, or to be allowed the lightest caress of her daughter’s hair or her shoulder. It would have helped her to “see” her, perhaps.
But it was many years since they had embraced each other. That was fair enough, there was no call for grown women to go around hugging and kissing each other all day, but Evelyn and her Mam had occasionally given each other a peck and a pat and it had probably done them good. But Grace had never been that kind of child.
Evelyn sighed and put down her knitting. Uncle Les looked forward to their weekly visits to him in hospital on Wednesdays, the shop’s half-day, and Grace should have shut up below and come up by now. If they had a quick early dinner they could make it to the half-past-one bus and that meant an hour and a quarter with him before all visitors had to leave at half past three. If they missed the bus going, they had barely half an hour. But more and more often Grace would slip away after shutting the shop and not come up for her dinner until it was past quarter to one. When Evelyn had asked her where she got to, all she would say was she hadn’t noticed the time. Any further questions were met with a sullen silence, not that Evelyn really needed to ask any; the smell of cigarette smoke and strong drink on her were explanation enough.
The other thing that worried Evelyn constantly was Grace’s attitude to Uncle Les. When he had first been taken ill, Grace had made it clear she didn’t care. He’s as tough as an old boot, that one. Don’t let him fool you, he’ll see you buried, she had said harshly. It was only after that first month, when he suddenly relapsed and then deteriorated, that she had begun to take any interest in how he was, wanting to know from day to day if he was out of danger or not. For about three weeks it had seemed to matter to her whether he lived or died. But then when he had been declared on the mend but facing a long, slow recovery, she lost interest again.
In fact, for the past four or five visits, she had spent at the most a few minutes at the bedside, keeping her coat on and refusing to sit down, before announcing that she was off for a walk and would come back for Evelyn at the end of the visiting hour. It was a blessing that Uncle Les had been too ill to take offence, but he was getting stronger now and Evelyn did not want him upset by Grace’s attitude. Grace just didn’t seem to recognize how much they owed to Uncle Les, and how much they still relied on his goodwill.
Just then she heard Grace’s solid tread on the stairs. Evelyn sighed again, got up, and went to the kitchen. There were potatoes to mash, and with a bit of luck the sausages in the oven wouldn’t be burnt quite to cinders.
On the bus, Evelyn squeezed into the window seat and Grace planted herself beside her, breathing hard. She sounded hot and heavy, but it was only May and there was a cool, fresh wind. Grace pulled in her breath and held it. Evelyn felt the tension in her and reached out to place a hand on her arm.
“Are you all right, love?” she said. “You sound a bit puffed.”
“I’m all right,” Grace said, shifting away from Evelyn’s touch.“Indigestion.”
“I’m not surprised,” Evelyn said with a forced chuckle. “By the time you were sat down to your dinner you’d barely five minutes to eat it.”
Grace had no reply to that and they travelled on in silence. The bus dropped them at the hospital gates. It was at least another five minutes’ brisk walk across the hospital grounds and down several echoing corridors to the Respiratory Diseases ward. Evelyn knew better than to take Grace’s arm so as usual she kept at her side by concentrating on the sound of Grace’s feet, waving her white stick to and fro ahead of her as she went. Today, Grace’s loud breathing mixed with the sound of her footfall. Her indigestion did seem to be troublesome. Maybe this would teach her not to cut it so fine on Wednesdays in future. Evelyn was about to suggest that she really needed to give herself a bit longer to digest her meal when Grace stopped dead.
Evelyn was alarmed. “Grace, what’s up? Are you all right?”
There was silence for a moment. “Aye, stop fussing, it’ll pass,” Grace growled. From the direction of her voice Evelyn knew she was either crouching on the ground or doubled over. “It’s just a stitch in my side.”
Sure enough after a short while Grace said brightly,“Come on, then. Let’s get it over with.”
“Oh, Grace, you are unkind about your uncle,” Evelyn murmured. But she was pleased that Grace sounded more like herself, even if it had to be a rather short-tempered self.