by Susan Gandar
‘Yes, ma’am.’
The Major’s wife clapped her hands.
‘The beef?’
Whether it was beef, or cat, or dog, or even rat, the Major’s wife had some meat for her suet pudding.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And the bread, you did get the bread?’
What should she say? Should she tell the truth, that she’d bought the bread but had given it away to a starving boy who would be lucky if he lived another day?
‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’
‘What? There must have been a loaf of bread somewhere…’
‘I’m sorry, ma’am. The shops had run out.’
‘All the shops?’
If there had been one more person standing ahead of her in the queue, her lie would be the truth.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘We’ll have to get you out of the house a little earlier tomorrow morning…’
Eyes down, mouth closed, Jess followed the Major’s wife along the hallway.
‘Tom is out with his father. They won’t be back until five o’clock, possibly six o’clock, which will give us time to get ready. The glass and china will have to be washed and the silver will need polishing. The Major wants flowers, candles, everything just like it used to be…’
Her last day at Eaton Villa was going to be a long, hard one. After the son told his parents about their maid, a thief and insolent with it, she would get her dismissal. She would go back home to the country and try to find a job, one that didn’t need a reference, perhaps in a factory or on a farm, closer to her mother.
‘Jess, I forgot, this came in the post for you.’
She tucked the envelope up her sleeve. It must be from her mother. The paper, the envelope and the stamps would have been expensive. And she would have had to find someone to write it for her. She must have something very special to say.
TWENTY-TWO
SAM TIPPED HERSELF OFF the chair. The floor lurched over to one side. Walls that had been solid tilted and swayed. She grabbed hold of the table and closed her eyes. The darkness whirled and swirled. She opened her eyes and raised her head. The window seemed much further away but also much larger, soaring over the kitchen and everything in it, including herself.
She fixed her eyes on the curtains. The spots and stripes, which before had been so regimented and orderly, now shimmered and shook, spiralling and cart-wheeling, backwards and forwards, out of control. Finger by finger, she detached herself from the table. She slid her foot out across the floor. It held. One step, two steps, a third step and she was safely across.
She leant over the kitchen sink, fighting the waves of sickness bubbling up inside her. The feeling of well-being she had experienced earlier had been replaced by a cold, dark, bleak emptiness. She was drunk. And not just drunk but very drunk. And she had to get upstairs to her bedroom without her mother either seeing or hearing her.
She turned off the light and, with her hand clamped onto the doorframe, took one step and then another out of the kitchen into the hall. She listened for movement, a door opening, the pad of feet along the landing, but none came. Her mother was still in her bedroom and, hopefully, still asleep. She clicked off the light.
Halfway up, the staircase slid away from underneath her feet and she collapsed down in a heap. It was comfortable, very comfortable, just lying there, going nowhere and doing nothing. She closed her eyes. The house started to spin round, faster and faster. The spinning slowed and then stopped.
She looked down towards the hall. She looked up towards the landing. Both seemed a very long way away but if she went up it would, at least, be in the right direction for her bedroom. And if she stayed down on her hands and knees there would be less risk of falling.
She pushed herself away from the wall and up and around onto her knees. She planted the point of one elbow and then a second elbow into the carpet. She hauled one knee and then a second knee up onto the first step, second step, and on and on up, until she hauled the last knee up and over the final step. She glued her back up against the wall and, inch by inch, straightened her legs until she was standing upright. She edged her way along the wall, down the landing.
Somebody was standing underneath the street lamp on the opposite side of the road. It was too dark to be able to tell whether they were male or female, young or old. But to stand there in the pouring rain with no umbrella, staring up at the house, was more than a little strange.
Sam pulled the curtains tight shut. She tumbled, almost falling headlong, down the stairs. She grabbed the key off the hook, jammed it into the lock and turned. The top bolt, the bottom bolt, if somebody wanted to come in they would have to batter the door down.
She put the key back onto its hook and then hauled her shaking body, step by shaky step, the floor and walls rocking and rolling around her, up towards the landing. She clamped her hands over her mouth. She ran past the closed door of her parents’ bedroom and threw herself into the bathroom. She leant over the sink, heaving and retching, while her body emptied itself of red wine. She picked up her toothbrush. Yes, she would feel better if she cleaned her teeth but it would have to wait. She was just too exhausted.
She slid out of the bathroom, along the landing, hugging the wall behind her. Her mother coming out of her bedroom and finding Sam collapsed in a comatose heap just wasn’t worth thinking about. Walking or crawling, she had to get to the safety of her bedroom.
But was it safe? Downstairs in the kitchen, she had been so drunk, so out of it, slumped there head down on the table, she wouldn’t have heard somebody stealing into the house. Anyone could have slipped the lock on the front door, crept down the hall, up the stairs and along the landing into her bedroom.
She pushed open the door and flicked on the lights. Her laptop was still on her desk, her mobile on the top of the cupboard beside the bed. Her rucksack lay on the floor, the side pocket un-zipped, her purse easy to see and grab, just as she had left it.
But perhaps they didn’t want her laptop or her mobile? Or her money, what little there was of it? Perhaps they wanted something else? Perhaps they were outside, on the balcony, waiting for her? Because what they wanted was…
She was drunk, and she was tired, and she was scaring herself witless about nothing at all. No one was outside. Nobody was waiting for her. It was just another stupid, silly, drunken, little thought.
She checked the door out onto the balcony, not once, but twice, unlocking it, re-locking it, and then, just in case, checked again for a third time. She pulled off her shoes, pulled off her clothes, pulled on her pyjamas, crawled underneath the duvet and turned off the light.
TWENTY-THREE
FOUR HOURS’ SLEEP WASN’T enough. And definitely not enough if you’ve drunk more than a bottle and a half of red wine.
Her head, her arms, her legs, were as heavy as lead. Her tongue felt like sandpaper. She dragged herself out of bed, across the room and out of the door. It was grey and misty outside. And it was raining – the sort of slow, steady, stubborn drizzle which would go on and on throughout the rest of the day.
She shuffled down the landing and into the bathroom. She brushed her teeth and gargled with mouthwash. At least she no longer smelt or tasted of sick.
She’d spent most of the night, huddled under the duvet, afraid that if she closed her eyes and went to sleep she’d be woken up by the chiming of a clock. And when that clock chimed, and when she woke up, she’d find herself inside somebody else’s body, in a room that didn’t exist, putting on clothes that didn’t exist.
She closed her eyes. She opened her eyes. Sam Foster was still there, staring back at her out of the bathroom mirror, even if she did look just a little bit hungover. And just a little bit crazy.
The door to her parents’ room was open. The bed was made but not in her mother’s usual I-don’t-know-why-I’m-bothering-to-do-this-it’s-all-so-boring sort of way. Pillows and cushions were lined up in a perfect line, rather than thrown together in a haphazard pile, and t
he duvet was positioned exactly in the middle of the bed rather than hunched over to one side. Neat and orderly, everything precisely in its place, the bedroom looked exactly how her father would have left it. Not her mother. Or at least not the mother she’d had yesterday or the day before yesterday.
‘They’re doing tests…’
Her mother, her phone glued to ear, was pacing up and down and around the kitchen. It must be somebody from work. Not the hospital. Which wasn’t good news, her father’s condition hadn’t improved, but then it wasn’t bad news either. There had been no change for the worse.
‘We should know later this morning…’
She didn’t know which was scariest; the mother who had gone to bed and cried herself to sleep or this mother, this too brisk, too bright and too organised one, chatting away on her mobile.
‘We have to be at the hospital at ten…’
Sam took a mug out of the cupboard and poured herself a coffee. She took a sip. It was hot, too hot, but it numbed the dull ache inside her head.
‘They’ll have the results of the scan by then…’
The evidence was there for all to see; two wine bottles, both empty, on the floor beside the rubbish bin. Her mother must have found them exactly where Sam had left them last night, sitting on the table, when she came downstairs to the kitchen earlier that morning.
‘I’ll give you a ring…’
Would she say something, about going to her room and staying there, leaving Sam all alone to get drunk as a skunk? Or would she sweep it to one side, pretend that everything was as it should be, that nothing out of the ordinary had happened?
She took another sip of coffee. All she wanted to do was crawl back into bed and bury herself under the duvet. But that wasn’t an option.
The doorbell rang, loud and long.
Parked in the road, at the front of the house, was her father’s car. Sam ran out into the hall. The front door wouldn’t open. She tried again. It wouldn’t budge. And then she remembered.
Looking down through the upstairs window and seeing the person, man, woman or child, it was impossible to tell it was so dark, standing outside in the pouring rain, staring up at the house. But last night she had been so drunk she would have seen, and believed, anything. She slipped the bolts back, took the key off the hook and unlocked the door.
‘Hello, Sam. Your dad phoned us yesterday. We’ve fixed the seatbelt…’
It was the man from the local garage. It had been silly to hope, even for just a second, it was her father. She’d been there, sitting behind him in the car, when he made the call.
‘Hello, Mr. Harris.’
Her mother, smiling as if this morning was just another Monday morning, was walking towards them down the hallway.
‘All right, there is it, Mrs. Foster, at the front, or shall I put it round the side?’
‘It’s fine. Thank you.’
The man held out a set of keys. Her mother took them.
‘Cheers.’
He walked away down the path.
‘I phoned your school. They’re not expecting you until after lunch…’
A girl, dressed in black, was standing underneath the streetlamp, on the other side of the road, directly opposite the house.
‘There’s some toast but you’ll have to be fast…’
And she was looking at Sam; not just looking, she was staring.
TWENTY-FOUR
THEY STEPPED OUT OF the lift. Outside, on the street, there had been laughter and sunlight. But here, on the very top floor of the hospital, in this windowless dungeon of a corridor, if someone had told her that the world had come to an end, that she and her mother were the only two people left alive, she would have believed them.
‘Mrs Foster. Sam.’
A man, as tall as he was broad, with skin as black as the uniform he was wearing was white, was walking down the corridor towards them.
‘My name is Mac. How are you doing?’
A fluorescent light cracked and fizzed overhead.
‘The consultant’s office is at the bottom of the corridor, Mrs Foster, second door on the right. They’re waiting for you.’
He put his hand on Sam’s shoulder.
‘What do you say to the two of us going in to see your father?’
Yesterday afternoon, when her father was transferred from the accident and emergency department to the intensive care unit, she and her mother must have come up in this same lift. But she could remember almost nothing about the ward itself and nothing at all about how they had got up there.
‘If you would prefer we could go to the family room and wait for your mother there. We have one right next-door to the ward. Have a coffee or some tea? It’s your call.’
It had to be faced.
‘I’d like to see Dad.’
‘Follow me, Sam.’
They went through the first set of double doors, then a second.
‘You OK?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
Her memory of the ward, the people in it, what they had been doing, was all wrong. What she’d been expecting, and dreading, was gloomy darkness with doctors and nurses walking from bed to bed talking in hushed whispers. But this space was brightly lit, like a supermarket, and filled with people, some in uniform, but many not, clustered around a central desk, talking on phones and tapping at computers.
‘When a patient is very sick or heavily sedated we have to use a ventilator to assist them with their breathing…’
She followed Mac down a central corridor lined on either side with cubicles. To her left, lying on a bed, hooked up to a bank of machines, head bandaged and with an oxygen mask over their face, was a person. Man or woman, young or old, it was impossible to tell. A nurse, lifted her head, nodded and smiled, and then turned back to the syringe she was filling.
‘We use monitors, each bed has its own set, to keep an eye on heart rate and rhythm, blood pressure, blood oxygen level, respiratory rate and temperature. And then there are the pumps, or syringe drivers, which help administer fluids and drugs. There are probably more than a hundred machines in here. Each has an alarm. And they all sound different. There’s one now…’
Loud and angry, and impossible to ignore.
‘There’s nothing to worry about. It’s usually just telling us that something needs checking…’
They turned right into the last cubicle. And there was her father.
‘Here, Sam, why don’t you sit down.’
And what had seemed, just a second ago, perfectly possible was now the most difficult thing in the world. He sat down beside her.
‘You know, many of the patients who come in here do get better. Some who were so sick their families thought they would never return home. But they did. We had one lady who was in a coma for six months. When she woke up she didn’t know she’d been in a road accident. She thought she’d been waiting to board a flight to America to see her family for Christmas…’
An airport, that’s where her father would go, inside his head, if he was in a coma. Only he’d never been that good at waiting.
‘There’s always hope. However, small and far away that hope may seem. And it’s that hope which will help your father and which will help you and your mother help us to help him. Hope. And love. And those two things are almost as important, perhaps even more important, than any of the drugs, or nursing and medical skills that anyone, here on the ward, can provide.’
If only she could believe him.
‘Would you like to take your father’s hand? That way he’ll know that you’re here, sitting beside him…’
The antiseptic, straight-lined, fluorescent whiteness of the hospital ward was replaced by a low-ceilinged, oak-beamed room with sagging cob walls and a beaten mud floor. The only light came from a single candle fluttering on a low table beside a bed, which was made out of wood rather than metal. The person lying on the bed, on a coarse woollen blanket, thrown over a lumpy, grey mattress, shiny with grease, was not her father but a c
hild. It was a boy, his eyes were closed, and he was naked. Lying beside him was a very small, white coffin.
‘What are you frightened of?’
A woman stepped forward out of the darkness. The dress she was wearing was so thick with dirt it was impossible to tell whether it was brown, blue, black or grey. Hair hung in limp, tangled strands round and over a face that was so thin, so pinched, it looked as though it was collapsing in on itself.
‘Send him on his way…’
The woman stepped towards the bed. She lifted the boy, so pale, so still, so small, he could have been a doll.
‘You loved him when he was alive…’
She kissed the boy’s forehead and then turned towards Sam.
‘Now love him when he’s dead…’
Sam didn’t know where she was. She didn’t recognise the woman. Nor did she recognise the child. But what she did know was that he was dead and this woman was expecting her to lean forward, take him in her arms, to embrace him, even love him. Her mind fought, tried to pull away, break itself free, as her head bowed down.
She was warm rather than cold. And the smell of dirt had been replaced by the smell of chemical cleanliness. She was back in the hospital.
‘I can’t.’
‘Why? Are you frightened?’
The white hand, punctured with tubes, lying on top of the sheet, was the same hand, the same blood and bones and skin that had saved her life. It had pulled her out of the river, when she’d fallen into the water just above the weir and was about to drown.
‘No. I don’t know. Perhaps…’
But she couldn’t touch it. It was impossible.
‘Sam, we’ve had many people like you, who’ve said, or thought, felt, the same thing. It’s no big deal. But, you know, whatever you think, your father will know that you’re holding his hand. He will sense it and it will help him get better…’
All she wanted was to get up out of this chair and out of this place, stuck between the world of the living and the world of the dead, a place with no hope and no future, as quickly as possible.