by Jane Gardam
‘All right,’ he said undoing his fingertips. ‘We’ll give you a letter for Doctor Michael Kerr and make an appointment.’
I had it in my handbag now and I carried my handbag with great care as I went to the tube station and took the train to Oxford Circus. I had a hat on and good gloves and pearl studs in my ears though only Woolworths. I walked to Michael’s nursing home calm as calm and one or two people—one of them a tall black man with a lovely smile—noticed me and I smiled back, particularly at the black man who looked kind.
I didn’t feel so good in the hospital though. There was a dreadful woman behind the reception desk. ‘For Dr Kerr?’ she said and looked at me as if nobody as insignificant as me had a right to see Michael. ‘Are you Private?’
‘No. Not really,’ I said. ‘But I am today.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’
‘I’m National Health but I didn’t think it was right to see Dr Kerr on the National Health because my doctor doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with me. So I insisted on paying.’
Up shot her neat, pencilled eyebrows. ‘I see,’ she said (another nutter). ‘Will you sit over there and wait please?’
She took my letter and opened it and smoothed it out and pinned it on a board and read it. Had she the right to do that? I must ask Rosalind.
But this was something I couldn’t ask Rosalind. This was very private. Rosalind would never know. I was Private today all right.
The receptionist looked closely at me now and then with gleaming eyes, and I tried to look at other things. I looked at two doors marked MALES and FEMALES. They had been newly painted over. You could still just see where LADIES and GENTLEMEN had been. ‘Males’ and ‘females’ looked dreadful somehow. Like a zoo.
I have always dreaded and hated hospitals though Rosalind of course doesn’t know. I kept looking at the notices and thinking ‘This is why’, though I couldn’t begin to tell you what I meant.
‘Would you come this way please, Mrs. Thessally?’—a nice, frizzy nurse as fat as Rosalind was when she was a baby, took me along to a waiting room and then after a minute another pure, thin Chinese nurse came out of a door and held it open and said, ‘Come in, Mrs. Thessally.’
I tried to get up but was unable to move.
‘This way, Mrs. Thessally.’
Still I sat.
She came across and said, ‘Come along, Mrs. Thessally. Dr Kerr doesn’t bite,’ and laughed showing little neat teeth.
And there I was sitting in front of a desk the size of a tennis court and there behind it sat Michael who used to be always having supper with us, making funny faces at me through the kitchen window as he came round by the back door, making me drop the teapot. Weeding the garden for me, looking at his watch and saying, ‘Where is the woman? Why does your daughter work so hard? Why isn’t she coming to play tennis?’ Two years and more Michael had been in our lives.
He looked older, grimmer and even bigger in his white coat. He had glasses—that was new—and he was reading my notes with the same drawn-down expression Rosalind has now.
‘Now then,’ he said, ‘Mrs.—er?’
I sat.
‘Mrs. Thessally!’ he said.
And I sat looking at my hands in the good gloves. I didn’t look at him any more. All that I needed to know I knew. I knew it from the horrified, upward-rising inflection of his voice. ‘Mrs. Thessally.’
And there on the table was the note from my own doctor saying that there was nothing wrong with me but that I had insisted on seeing him and only him.
I knew there and then how terribly I had blundered. And, as with Rosalind and as never before with dear Michael, I was quite unable to speak.
A nurse creature came in and said, ‘So sorry, doctor—could you just sign these,’ and he did. She went out. He moved the ashtray and things on the tennis court about and cleared his throat. I could hear the small tick of the little gold clock on the shelf behind him—one of Rosalind’s birthday presents.
The door burst open behind and someone called, ‘Oh sorry—could I have a quick word?’ and a young, carefree-looking houseman came in with coat and stethoscope flapping. ‘I say, Mrs. Arnold’s doing well.’
Michael said, ‘Oh yes.’
‘Marvellous. She could go out today, I’d think.’
‘You wouldn’t think if you’d seen her last night. She collapsed.’
‘What!’
‘Yes. We were with her two hours.’
‘Oh God. Nobody told me.’
‘Then it’s just as well you saw me, isn’t it? I hope you haven’t told her?’
‘What?’
‘That she can go home today.’
‘No. No.’
‘She needs a good bit of care.’
The houseman vanished and the door closed.
Michael got up and went and stood looking out of the window and I got up, too.
‘I’d better go,’ I said. He said nothing. I got to the door and I just had to look round at him and there was his familiar shape made so godlike and all-powerful by its setting, larger than life, so different from when it used to be crawling in and out of my delphiniums setting slug-pellets and calling down curses on my absent, over-working, non-tennis-loving daughter. Oh, however had I dared!
‘Mrs. T,’ he said to the distant chimney pots of Bayswater, ‘this is absolutely none of my doing. I want you to know. Nothing at all can come from me. I think that since Rosalind clearly hasn’t told you then I should. It is very much all over.’
‘Female,’ I said.
‘What?’ he said turning round.
‘Female.’ I was thinking of the awful notices on the door outside. I don’t know that I really knew what I was talking about but I went on. ‘She couldn’t come to you, you know. I know all the equality and things, and she does seem to be so completely a doctor. But there are still very deep conventions.’
He frowned and swung away and looked out of the window again.
‘There are things a woman can’t do. It’s so odd—but she can’t. Unless she’s a man-woman. It has nothing to do with status, Women’s Lib and so on. It is an instinct. Rosalind would never, never write or ring you up—unless for a death or something. She would let all you have had together go before—’
And I was gone, out of the room, out of the waiting room, out of the hospital, back into Oxford Street and my heart was beating so loud it was probably making more noise than Mrs. Arnold’s who’d collapsed. I seemed to be crying, too. I walked the whole length of Oxford Street looking in all the shop-windows and what was in them all I don’t know. When I got to Tottenham Court Road there was a huge cinema and I bought a ticket and went in. It seemed to be a film made for giants. The screen was so big you had to turn your head to get it all in. Enormous people came bounding out of it at you, singing at the top of their voices—happy children—nuns who became governesses and married princes and escaped from the Germans and sang and sang and sang. What curious lives people lead.
There were very few people in the cinema—an old woman in my row was fast asleep and the only other person was a greasy young man with his feet up on the seat in front who kept on getting up and going back to buy ice-creams. At the end of the film when there seemed to be some sort of a royal wedding going on I got up and went out and found it was quite dark; and I thought I would look for a cup of tea.
But I walked all down Bloomsbury Way without finding one and at the end of it I found I was standing instead on the steps of an hotel.
It was a very busy, ugly-looking hotel with a lot of students sitting about in the foyer with haversacks and the carpets very threadbare and not clean, and without knowing what on earth I was about to do I pulled the glass doors open and went in and booked a room for the night. It was six pounds in advance and I paid out of my purse, and went upstairs. I lay on the bed w
hich was narrow and hard and looked at the ceiling. ‘What is the good of it? Suffering like this for her,’ I thought, and I was so tired I hadn’t even taken off my shoes—‘After all,’ I thought, ‘it isn’t me.’
I must have fallen asleep then because it was suddenly very still, and from something in the silence and the blackness of the window it was obviously the middle of the night. I sat up and felt frightened and dazed for a moment, until I remembered where I was. Then I found that my thoughts had not moved on though my watch said three A.M. I was still saying, ‘Why suffer so? It’s not me. It’s not my affair.’
I began to think in a way I had never thought before in all Rosalind’s twenty-seven years. I thought of the breakfasts when she never looked in my direction; the months and months and months when she was only a hurried figure appearing for meals, retiring to her study, rushing out to see to others; of all the years when—except for Ruth Sykes and Mrs. Somebody in the road or Uncle James at Hastings, because we’ve so few relatives and since Jack died I’ve not had much interest in friends and going about—all the years when every telephone call and letter and message and enquiry and invitation has always been for her. I thought of her great big handsome face that never smiles at mine, the way she winces whenever I open my mouth, the way she so clearly despises me. Of how the only times she had ever softened at all into the Rosalind of long ago and before Jack died was when Michael was there—and she had never actually invited Michael, now I came to think of it. He had found his own way to us, first just dropping her at the gate, or picking her up, usually too early for her. ‘Oh Lord! Sorry,’ she had always said, bursting in on us as we sat together talking or Michael weaving about, looking under saucepan lids in the kitchen. ‘It’s all right,’ he’d say. ‘Your Mama and I have been enjoying ourselves.’ I remembered the slight surprise I had seen in her face sometimes at this remark—the frequent quick look at me to see what I was wearing and relief if it was something she didn’t think ghastly.
As the dawn began to make the sky grow pale and dirty over Bloomsbury, I realised that after all I didn’t like Rosalind very much.
And as I fell asleep and the local sparrows began to tweet I said clearly and out loud, ‘I have had enough. Oh, I have had enough.’
When I woke about half past nine I washed in the nasty little basin, but only my face and hands and not with any real interest and, still just in the same wool suit I had slept in, I went downstairs and I sat for a time in the foyer. There were more students about than ever, getting hot drinks in paper cups out of a machine on the wall. I felt out of place in my hat and gloves and pearl studs and rather faint in all the bustle and heat. A gingerish little girl of about eighteen or nineteen flopped down on the seat beside me and began to read a map of London. She knocked my arm. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Oh! Are you all right?’
‘If I gave you the money,’ I said, ‘could you get me a cup of tea out of the machine?’
She got it and came and stood over me while I drank it, with a serious, earnest face. ‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘Shall I get someone?’
She asked like a child asking someone wiser. ‘No, dear,’ I said. ‘Thanks so much though.’ A funny, ordinary little thing. The sort I might have had. The sort really you’d expect Jack and me to have had. The sort I wish—
I went out into Bloomsbury Way and into Museum Street and thought I might go to the British Museum, but the street looked very long and I didn’t seem to make any great progress down it. I felt really most odd. ‘I shall buy a present for that poor Mrs. Arnold,’ I said to someone passing, who looked alarmed. A bus passed very close to me at some lights. I felt the wind of it. It blew my skirt against me. A taxi driver yelled at me as I just made the kerb. I thought, ‘I suppose I should really be more careful and perhaps I should move on now?’
What I meant by move on was left for my subconscious to decide and I was pleased that it did, relieving me of responsibility. It directed me to Russell Square tube station and suggested that I descend. I changed, or I supposed I changed, at a couple of stations because in an unspecified time—an hour or a day—I found that the train had stopped at Putney Bridge. I was home it seemed. I got out.
Now our house is in one of those streets to the right of Putney High Street and a long walk from either Putney Bridge or the High Street Station. Even a bus doesn’t take you very near. You have to get across the High Street, too, at the outset, and that isn’t nothing on a Saturday morning. ‘Look alive,’ someone shouted as I dithered on an island. I made the further shore and trudged on. I trudged down Lacey Road and Cawnpore Terrace. On I trudged past all the plum and purple houses, row upon row with names like Quantox and East Lynne. Jack was so fond of Putney. I’ve never liked it much.
Perhaps I’ll move. I’ll just go away. Well, really, it’s very silly just waiting hand and foot on a great twenty-seven-year-old woman you don’t like and who doesn’t like you.
The elastic went in my locknits. I’ve always worn locknits—briefs and loose legs are not nice on anyone my age and I like a gusset. They have the old-fashioned elastic which you can still get at the Home and Colonial, very reliable and long-lasting whatever Rosalind says. Never before in all the years has the elastic broken and the knicker leg begun to fall.
Then I turned into our road and I saw the police car.
And I ran.
I ran past Mrs. Fergusson at number 63 though she was waving her arms about and calling, and Mrs. Atkinson next door was calling too, standing in her front garden and looking over at our house. It didn’t seem like our road at all somehow. Very lively it seemed. And myself at the centre of things—my knicker leg hanging.
Then a policeman came out of our house and Michael with him, talking together. And then I knew. There and then at once I knew.
She had killed herself.
She had cried last night and come out of her room to the bathroom and got all the aspirins and killed herself. The one night I had not been on the landing waiting, the one night in all her life I had abandoned her and ceased to care. A suicide note. Michael’s name on the envelope. Michael summoned to the house by the police.
And then I was lying flat on my back on my own sitting room sofa with three faces looking down at me—one I had not seen before, a policeman’s, very young and sensible. One was Michael’s face and one—Oh God, oh God, oh God be thanked!—was Rosalind’s!
And her face was all wet and streaming all round and under the glasses and she seemed to be shouting in a fierce and furious way—yelling, yelling, ‘Where were you? Where were you? How could you?’
The policeman shook hands with Michael who saw him I suppose to the door while Rosalind’s maniac yelling went on. ‘We thought you were dead. We thought you were dead. Under a car—’
Michael came in and got her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Shut up at once and go and get your mother some tea.’ Sobbing like a great booby she went and I sat up and Michael and I looked at each other.
‘Oh Michael, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have interfered. It was nothing to do with me. I don’t know what I was thinking—’
‘Hush,’ he said. He sat down on a stool and took my hand and we sat quiet.
‘I rang Ruth Sykes. Don’t pretend you were with Ruth Sykes,’ Rosalind cried hurtling in with a milk jug. ‘Out of our minds with— Oh! Good heavens! Knicker leg!’ she shrieked. She disappeared and there was a great noise of crockery crashing in the kitchen.
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘She’s so hopeless. I’d better go—’
‘Hush,’ he said.
‘She rang,’ he said, ‘she rang this morning.’
‘So I was even wrong about that.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘she left a message. She said, “It is my mother. It is a matter of life and death”. You said, “Only if it were a death”.’
‘Well, it wasn’t,’ I said.
‘Oh Michael. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to make you feel you had to come running—’
‘I didn’t. I decided yesterday I’d come back. After you’d gone. They caught me leaving for here after she’d rung off. I was leaving when she phoned but she doesn’t know that. She said, “Oh how quick you’ve been,” when she opened the door. I felt—not commendable.’
I closed my eyes, for it was all too difficult. Then in flew Rosalind again with a tray of oddments—the old brown teapot and three stray cups. She’d taken off her glasses and her hair was falling down and her cheeks were bright pink right up close under the eyes, all roses like a child again. She really is a lovely girl.
‘How could you?’ she was still crying out. ‘Out of my mind—You’ve never, ever—Whenever did you—?’ and so on. Michael stretched up his other hand and took hers and said ‘Hush,’ again, ‘Let your poor mother rest.’ He said, ‘I’ve never met such an emotional pair. If you don’t both stop I’ll have to call a doctor.’
‘Oh don’t try to be funny, Michael.’ But, ‘Hush,’ he said again. ‘Your poor Mama is going to need all the strength she’s got to organise this wedding.’
And Rosalind poured a whole cup of tea all down the front of her dress and onto the floor and dropped the cup and smashed it (the last of the Worcester) and she just gazed at him.
‘It beats me,’ he said—but gazing back at her with such joy—‘It beats me. Medically,’ he said, ‘genetically’ (and I shall tell Ruth Sykes) ‘it beats me how such an intelligent woman could produce such a stupid great child.’
THE GREAT, GRAND, SOAP-WATER KICK
Now and then you get to get washed. Now and then you start needing bath.
Not often. Every second year maybe.
Comes over you. Sudden. You begin think, hello now. Sun hot. You see big toe lookin out of slit boot, yellowish grey. Like ivory. On elephant.