Guppies for Tea
Page 25
The night before the Hamiltons’ return, Amelia stayed all night in a chair in the study watching over Selma, listening to her breaths that came as quick and light as a runner’s steps. She had opened the window, letting in an icy wind from the sea, but Selma was warm, covered up with several blankets. Amelia felt she knew somehow that when you were dying you didn’t want silence and sterility but air and movement, smells of flowers and of cooking, voices and music; all the sounds and sights of life as long as you were still a part of it.
Earlier in the day, when Dr Donaldson had told Amelia it was unlikely that Selma would get up again, she had tidied away the Christmas decorations and loaded the van with Selma’s furniture. She had taken the sheets off the bed in her old room and put them on the chair in the study. All the china except a cup and saucer and plate was boxed up and back in the van. Only the study she left as it was.
Now she stretched and yawned in her chair and, leaning across the chaise-longue, pulled the covers up higher across Selma’s shoulders. She was about to open the writing case to continue her letter to Henry, when she paused and got her handbag instead. In the small zipped compartment was Henry’s locket; she picked it up and, looking at it for a moment, hung it round her neck. With a little sigh she sat back and started to write:
‘Selma is dying and, loving her as I do, I wish you’d tell me what the purpose is of making it such a drawn-out affair. Soon I’ll find out if the Hamiltons are prepared to drag a dying woman from her bed. Life that once seemed quite a decent length now appears pitifully short. She lies there, her breathing is so quick and shallow, her time here almost up. I bet it didn’t seem much more than a moment to her. I don’t suppose it ever does.
‘If I escape the consequences of my actions, which I very much hope I will, I don’t think I shall stay in Kingsmouth, not once Selma is gone. I don’t expect I’d be very welcome either. I’ll probably go back to London and find a job. I suppose down here I have actually done something at last. I’ve taken action. I’ve lied and cheated and broken into a house, and do you know, for the first time in my life I feel proud of myself. I remember saying to you once that there was no such thing as a happy ending in life, no such thing as a happy death. Well maybe I was wrong. Maybe Selma is having a happy death, or as near to it as one can get, and I’ve had something to do with it.
‘… I enclose my grandfather’s signet ring; I would like to think of you wearing it, and so would Selma. It’s really a present from her.
‘… As I write, I can feel your locket against my skin. Keep safe Henry, I pray each night that there will not be a war …’
Selma stirred and mumbled. Amelia put her pen down and went up to the window, parting the curtains to let in the morning light. Then she went in to the kitchen and made a pot of tea and buttered some white bread. There was no more of their food left in the freezer now and only one pint of long-life milk. She carried the tray back into the study and put it down on the table by the chaise-longue. A little later Selma opened her eyes and tried to sit up. As her head fell back against the pillow she whispered, ‘Could you do meals on wheels for me today, darling? I don’t think I’m feeling terribly well.’
It was eight o’clock and Amelia wandered out into the garden. Two camellias, one red, one pink, grew against the south-facing wall at the back. The pink one was already flowering; un-English, un-blushing pink against lush green leaves. She picked a few blooms and brought them inside for Selma, placing them close to her.
At ten, Selma woke and drank a little warm milk from the flask Amelia had made up. ‘I must tell Willoughby the camellias are out already,’ she said.
Soon after that the front door opened and slammed shut.
‘And what, Miss Lindsay is your grandmother still doing on my settee?’ Doreen Hamilton, wrapped in a white mohair coat, stood in the study doorway framed by light from the sitting-room bay, her bleached hair streaked further by a tropical sun, her turquoise eyes fringed by mascara’d lashes stiff and furry as flies’ legs.
Amelia got up from Selma’s bedside and pulled the screen closer. Then she walked across the room to Doreen. ‘She’s still dying,’ she said in a quiet voice, ‘and the chaise-longue is hers. If you make her leave you’ll most probably speed up the process: I believe lost hope and a broken heart are tried and tested killers.’ She forced herself to stay calm in the face of the image of Selma being taken back, confused and terrified, to Cherryfield, of her whispering, ‘My mother died in a place like this.’
‘She’s dying, did you say?’ Doreen hissed. Nudged by Amelia she backed out of the room and turned to her husband who had appeared behind her, only his round sleek head visible above the huge collar of his sheepskin coat.
‘Desmond, Mrs Merryman is dying in our study and it’s not even acute.’
‘I’ll phone the nursing home.’ Desmond Hamilton glared at Amelia. ‘And the police.’
‘No!’ Amelia ran past him and yanked the phone from its socket.
‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ He strode out to the hall where the second telephone stood.
‘It wouldn’t look good in the paper,’ Amelia called out after him. ‘“Local property developer hurls dying woman on to street”.’
Desmond Hamilton’s head appeared around the door.
‘I’m not hurling your grandmother anywhere. I’m getting her back to the nursing home where she belongs.’
For a moment Amelia did nothing, feeling her will to fight dissolve; what Desmond had just said was so reasonable. Then she thought of Selma, dying so contentedly in the study of her beloved Ashcombe. Would she cry and beg? She’d be so frightened. With a little sob, Amelia rushed past Doreen and into the study, locking the door behind her. Panting she ran up to the window and shut it, sliding the double-glazing pane across. She stood there for a moment looking out at the garden where the mist was breaking up revealing the familiar shapes of shrubs and trees. Her heartbeat slowed down and she began to breath normally.
‘Hello darling.’ Selma had opened her eyes and was smiling at her. ‘Is it morning already?’ She put her hand out, tipping over one of the medicine bottles on the small table by her side.
Amelia automatically checked the time on her watch; it was about time for the first lot of pills of the day. She stayed sitting down, resting her head against the back of the chair, closing her eyes. The pills could wait a minute or two. When she opened her eyes a short while later, Selma was sleeping again, and she could hear murmuring voices from the other room. There was a knock on the door making her jump. With a glance at Selma she hurried across the room up to the door.
‘Yes?’
‘Miss Lindsay, Amelia,’ the voice was coaxing. ‘It’s Doreen here. We’ve called the nursing home and spoken to the Matron and they’re sending transport, so you might as well open the door.’
Amelia began to cry, fat salty tears rolled down her cheeks. What could she do now? What could she do to stop Selma’s poor old body, barely able to contain her soul, from being stretchered off to Cherryfield where a suitable dying, a well-ordered, well-mannered and, above all else, legal dying was being arranged?
‘Just give us a moment, will you Doreen?’ Her voice broke. ‘Please.’
There was silence, then Doreen’s voice again, measured and reasonable. ‘Very well then, Amelia, five more minutes but then you’ll have to open the door.’
Five minutes passed and then five more. Amelia stopped crying and put some music on. She sat down by Selma, watching her, listening to the two violins making love to each other. She put her hand in her pocket and traced the outline of the signet ring that lay with the letter, waiting to be sent to Henry. There was another knock on the door.
‘Desmond says they’ll be here any minute now.’
Amelia didn’t answer and miraculously, so that Amelia began to believe miracles really happened, nothing was heard for a good half hour other than the music and the wind blowing through the chimney.
Then: ‘Mis
s Lindsay, there’s someone to see you.’ Doreen, on the other side of the door, sounded inviting.
‘Leave us alone, please.’
‘Miss Lindsay, this is Sister Morris. I think you’re not quite yourself. You’d better let us in, your grandmother needs professional care.’
Exhausted, Amelia went up close to the door. In a quiet, even voice she said, ‘You’re right, I’m not myself and I’m all the better for it and if you don’t stop bothering us I will kill her. Now, will you please GO AWAY?’
As she waited, Amelia was pleased that she had made a store of sandwiches and drinks. She ate some at lunchtime, but she cried when she couldn’t get Selma even to drink.
‘Miss Lindsay,’ again a voice beckoned her to the door. ‘It’s Dr Donaldson here. Sister Morris from Cherryfield has left now. I told her that there was no overwhelming medical reason for your grandmother to go back.’
‘Desmond will call the police, I’m warning you.’ That was Doreen.
‘So I’m afraid you’ve got to sort out your differences with the Hamiltons, Miss Lindsay.’ Dr Donaldson spoke again. ‘I’ll be back in a little while, if you’re still here. In the meantime please check your grandmother’s dressing and make sure she’s not in pain.’
Again, Amelia heard nothing from the Hamiltons for a while and she managed to put clean dry sheets on Selma’s chaise-longue. Changing the sheet with Selma on top wasn’t easy, but Selma woke for a moment and helped by easing up her legs and shoulders. She smiled weakly at Amelia. ‘I’ll be better tomorrow, you’ll see, darling.’ Then she closed her eyes and fell back into a deep sleep.
Amelia needed a pee and, checking to see there was no-one in the garden, she opened the window, climbed out and hurried along the wall of the house to the shrubbery on the corner. Coming back again, locking the window behind her, she heard Doreen calling.
‘Amelia, have you come to your senses yet? We don’t want a scene.’
‘Can’t you think of us as guests?’ Amelia pleaded, pressing her face to the small crack in the door. ‘You’ve got the whole rest of the house and it’s not as if we’re complete strangers.’
‘You’re not guests, you’re squatters or housebreakers, or whatever. Anyway, my guests don’t come here to die.’
Amelia started to laugh. She laughed so much that Doreen had to shout at her to stop. Selma mumbled something Amelia couldn’t make out, but she didn’t wake.
Then it wasn’t long before she saw Desmond Hamilton’s face at the window. He looked grey and unfocused in the dusk and he mouthed something, holding up a piece of paper for her to read: ‘You have until 7.00 a.m. to think things over. Then we call the police.’ His sleek head nodded emphatically and disappeared into the darkness. Amelia settled down to wait.
‘Has she eaten?’ Dr Donaldson asked through the door some hours later. ‘And what about you? Have you had anything?’
‘She had a teaspoon of broth a little while ago.’ Amelia’s voice broke. ‘I can’t get any more down her. She sleeps the whole time, it’s such a deep sleep.’
‘It’s all right.’ Dr Donaldson’s voice was calm, soothing like calamine lotion. ‘Try her with some water and make sure you have some of that broth yourself. Has she had her pills?’
‘I missed this morning’s lot … I tried a while ago but I could only get her to take the white one, you know the one for her blood pressure, and the black and yellow capsule. She doesn’t seem to be in any pain.’
‘That’s not so bad then. Try to sleep. And Miss Lindsay, they do intend to get you out tomorrow, one way or the other. I’m sorry.’
Amelia sat on the floor, her back against the side of the chaise-longue and her fingers clasping the locket round her neck. Now and then she would doze off only to wake with a start, her mouth dry and her heart pounding.
It was six o’clock when she got up, stiff-legged and aching, to open the window. She leant out, feeling the cold morning air on her face. As she turned around her gaze fell on the soft pillow supporting Selma’s head; already Selma’s breath was as fragile as a glass thread, it wouldn’t take much, a quick movement, the slightest of pressure and the flow would be cut. Amelia walked across the room with little quick steps, up to the chaise-longue, putting her hands on the pillow. She stayed there looking at her grandmother, then she closed her eyes as if she was standing at the edge of a cliff, preparing to leap into the cold clear sea below. When she opened her eyes again she found Selma looking back at her.
‘Is that you, darling?’ Selma’s voice sounded as if it came from a long way away. ‘Darling, are you there?’ Her voice was a little anxious now and Amelia knew she could be addressing any number of her darlings: Daniel, Dagmar, Willoughby, Robert, or Amelia herself, it didn’t matter whom really, as long as one of them, one of those people that belonged to her, was there.
With a little sigh she bent down and kissed Selma’s cheek, it felt papery and hot against her lips.
‘It’s time for your pills,’ she said, ‘time for your pills.’ She stretched across the pillow and reached for the first of the bottles, shaking out two small red capsules into her sticky palm.
Selma opened her eyes wide. Raising herself from the pillow she looked straight at Amelia and whispered, ‘Bugger the pills.’ She slumped back and, with a little frown, she died.
Slowly a tear appeared in Amelia’s eyes, then another. She kneeled by the bed and put her arms round Selma, holding her for a while then, when she heard the sound of a car on the gravel, she got up and unlocked the door.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Elizabeth Buchan and Hilary Johnson for their invaluable help. Warmest thanks too, to Diane Pearson, my editor, for her belief in this book and to Sarah Molloy, my agent, for her support.
Special thanks to Richard Cobbold, Lars Hjorne, Anne Hjorne, Liz Bebb and Ann Drake for their help and support and to Jeremy and Harriet Cobbold for their constant encouragement.
A Note on the Author
Marika Cobbold was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, but has lived in England since the 1970s. GUPPIES FOR TEA is her first novel and was shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award in 1993. Her other novels include A RIVAL CREATION, THE PURVEYOR OF ENCHANTMENT, FROZEN MUSIC and SHOOTING BUTTERFLIES.
By the Same Author
A Rival Creation
The Purveyor of Enchantment
Frozen Music
Shooting Butterflies
First published in Great Britain 1993 by Black Swan
First published by Bloomsbury Publishing 2003
Copyright © 1993 by Marika Cobbold
This electronic edition published 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
The right of Marika Cobbold to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4088 2183 1
www.bloomsbury.com/marikacobbold
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