by Olive Senior
78
I DON’T KNOW HOW much holding you ever got as a child, but I say it softly to myself, for I think you have fallen asleep, your thin arm still around me, resting lightly as a bird. Within three months I was pregnant again. They say it can’t happen while you are nursing, but it’s not true. So by the time you were one, there was Shirley, and at two there was Charles Junior. You had left home by the time Lise was on the way four years later. I don’t know what came first—my not holding you enough or your not wanting to be held. You almost walked out of my womb, you came so fast. You kept going, creeping, standing, toddling, then striding along by your lonely little self. It was as if we were all afraid of you, you so perfect, with the round face and plump cheeks like a little china doll, bisque coloured, so beautiful, so self-contained, so distant. Even Shirley and Junior, they made a pair, from the start they clung to each other, never to big sister.
Maybe it was that self-sufficiency in you those people saw when you went away to camp that year you were almost five. It was the principal at the infant school who took you. Her husband was headmaster of the primary school and their daughter was the same age as you. You had both just started school and the wife was going as a camp counsellor so she asked us to let you go with them. Two whole weeks at this Christian camp, some American denomination, children 5 to 15. It was free.
You came back the way you left, not saying a word, but plumper, the bisque darkened to caramel, wearing shorts and a T-shirt and a cloth cap that both read MARYFIELD CAMP. It was your teacher who told us what a wonderful time you had, playing games, learning to swim in the pool, singing around the campfire, learning to plait straw and finger paint and memorize Bible verses. To us you said nothing. You just came out of Teacher’s car carrying your little bag and smiled. You went straight to your room. It was only after talking with your teacher that we could question you about the time you’d had.
No coaxing could ever get you to sing or talk about anything you had done. You just shook your head with your mouth compressed in that funny little smile, as if it was a game with you, this determination to keep all information from us. But you did share with your little brother and sister your coloured cards of scenes from the Bible, the packets of sticky stars, the paper dolls, your new crayons, and the coloured cartridge paper they had given you. You supervised their colouring. You even allowed them to take turns wearing your cap and T-shirt. You were generous that way. With your things. It was with yourself that you were stingy. Lying here now in the bed, your body fragile but warm against mine for the first time in over forty years, I have to wonder how much I ever spoke to you.
79
I SPOKE TO YOU when I carried you in my belly, but silently, for you were so much a part of me I knew you understood my every heartbeat, my entire life opening up to you. You understood that it was now up to you, the you in whom I was investing everything, all else in my life having failed, for he was already running around. When you were born I played with you a lot, moving your tiny feet up and down as I sang, over and over: “Bye baby bunting / papa’s gone a hunting / gonna get a rabbit skin / to wrap my baby bunting in.” I’d have tears in my eyes, for that was the only song I remembered from my own childhood. But who sang it to me, I don’t know. As you got older, I’d fall into the curvature of your smile. But my belly was big again by then, and there was always so much to do. After the washing of nappies and the cleaning and cooking and ironing I would lie exhausted on my side with you beside me on the bed, and I would study the perfection of your little hands and feet, smile at the fragility of your eyelashes, your nails, feel your tiny hand clutch mine and wish I could hold on to you forever. But I never said these things out loud, and already, although I did not know it, you were slipping away from me.
I tried to change this break but I cannot. I need to cut this last line & on this page. / T
80
WE DIDN’T TALK AT all that night, Celia and I. I couldn’t sleep, but I let her until she woke as day was breaking, came fully awake the minute she opened her eyes, peered at her watch and jumped up.
“Omigod, I have to go. I have a class first thing this morning.” Putting on her shoes and taking up her handbag, taking out her cell phone. She paused and looked at me. “Mom, sorry I have to rush. Will you be okay?”
I nodded, surprised that while she was there with me I was feeling perfectly fine, but now I could feel the heat rising again inside me.
“I’ll call you and come by later. Okay?”
I nodded and closed my eyes as I heard the door shut, ever so carefully, behind her.
81
MATRON CAME WHEN I didn’t appear for breakfast, cooing, “Mrs. Samphire. Miss Sam. I am soooo sorry,” as she walked in. She threw open all the windows, for I guess the room was stifling hot, though I was shivering under the cover. Then she took a good look at me. She leaned over to place her hand against my cheek, took hold of my wrist to feel my pulse. Then she called the doctor. After that I don’t remember very much of the next few days. By the time I came down off that high of fever and medical cocktails, Mr. Bridges was well and truly buried.
I remember Ruby and Birdie coming into my room looking like kling-kling birds in their funeral black—jet beads, even—and just as noisy. I suppose by then I was lucid enough to want to hear something of the event. But after telling me that the church was full, and about the soloist and the flowers and all the children and grandchildren present, they both got so caught up in arguing about the relationship between this person and that, and who came from what side of the family and what was their name again, that I fell asleep before they sorted it out.
82
IT WAS MATRON WHO unwittingly introduced the second act in this drama, though to this day I am unaware of how much she knows. But I do think the motive behind her invitation was innocence rather than malice. For the more I’ve come to know her the more I think there’s more to Delice Spence than I first credited. Or maybe it’s just that my own state of mind has undergone so many spins, I no longer know what is what.
She must have sensed that I was feeling so much better, almost myself, that day she came to my room. For though I was spending most of the day out of bed, I still hadn’t gathered up the courage to go down to the dining room. I have to grant Matron credit for sensitivity, for although she must have known the state of affairs, she made no fuss about the room service she had to provide.
I was still feeling fragile, both mentally and physically. As with other people who are hardly ever ill, the shock of being incapacitated and dependent on others frightened me, and for the first time I began to feel my age, indeed felt much older than my years. It was if I had suddenly skipped a decade or two and metamorphosed into a really old woman, like one of those downstairs who spent her days drooling and nodding in front of the TV, waiting to be transited from Ellesmere Lodge to an Old People’s Home. I was still floating on cotton wool, studiously avoiding thinking of Mr. Bridges or anything else. I engaged in the most mindless of activities—watching the soaps in my room, leafing through the fashion magazines, TIME, National Geographic, and Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Awake! that various visitors brought. Listening, with only half an ear, to the visitors.
But I really perked up, without showing it, of course, when Matron introduced the topic of her visit. She breezed into my room one morning just as Maisie had finished cleaning, in brisk mode as ever, asking how I was feeling while plumping up the pillows, adjusting the venetian blinds, before looking hard at me in a fashion I assume was dictated by the Holloway Nursing Manual. She seemed satisfied by the whites of my eyes, or whatever, but instead of rushing off then, as she usually did, she fluttered around for so long in blinding lime green and cerise that I finally asked her if she would like to sit. To my great surprise, she sat in the chair beside the bed, crossing her legs—orange wedgies, so now I know who her fashion icon is—and arranging her bat sleeves in a way that suggested she had something of importance to say.
My hackles ros
e, for it reminded me of my early days at Ellesmere Lodge and those endless office grillings. But then I relaxed, for I sensed here less of the tyrant and more of someone who had information of some slight embarrassment to convey. Or someone who wanted to ask a favour. I was steeling myself for her usual whimsical and winding and annoying approach to the subject when she surprised me by coming straight to the point.
“Listen, Mrs. Samphire. I wonder if. You can help me. Your daughter … I can tell you are feeling. Ever so much better … Bit of a jam. New resident to be settled in … and then it’s the board meeting tomorrow and everything and I’m up to my ears. Minutes and reports … So. I was wondering?”
She paused then. I looked blankly at her, as I had no idea where this was leading. But then I almost jumped at the mention of his name.
“Mr. Bridges. Daughter just phoned. Supposed to come over to clear out his room. But now. She says. Been so tied up with other things. Can’t. Flying. Back to the States tonight. Well. So inconsiderate. Since we have a new resident. Arriving. For the room. On Monday.”
Matron’s voice fluted up on the last note, and she drummed her fingers on the wooden armrest and paused, as if she expected me to genuflect to the economics of keeping the rooms at Ellesmere Lodge filled. I showed nothing on my face, which encouraged her to go on. And was I surprised! For Mr. Bridges’ daughter had asked Matron to just go ahead and pack everything up.
“She says I should take what we can use here. Give the rest away. To the staff. Or whoever. Imagine that!”
Matron said this in a rather disapproving tone, and I have to confess to sharing her amazement at the casual way the rich could toss things out! A sure sign that in our earlier years, Matron and I had been spun out of the same frugal cloth.
The cousin who was looking after Mr. Bridges’ house would come over to collect his personal stuff—his papers, jewellery, cufflinks, that sort of thing, and an oil painting he had brought with him. She had a list. But they didn’t want to be bothered with anything else.
“She said,” Matron reported, unconsciously mimicking the daughter’s voice, “‘Can you imagine how much stuff we already have to sort out at the house? Daddy was such a collector.’ Didn’t sound too pleased, I can tell you.”
I wondered what all of this had to do with me, though the cotton wool in my head was beginning to clear. And it floated away entirely when Matron explained, or rather, asked, in a very sweet voice, the bat sleeves fluttering and the wedgies twisting together in a girlish way: Would I feel up to sorting out Mr. Bridge’s room? She had spoken to my daughter and she said as long as it was fine with me.
“Normally, I would never ever ask a resident to do this, Miss Sam … Never, in all my years … but this is a special case, and I know you are, well, not like … I know how close … I mean how you were such a friend of his here … I mean … I think you wouldn’t mind …?”
The request was so unexpected that I didn’t have time to enjoy Matron’s discomfiture. What amazed me is that I didn’t have to think about it. For my heart was already pounding out, yes, yes. As if I’d won the lottery. I truly don’t know why. But the thought of going into Mr. Bridges’ room one more time excited me, as if that was where I needed to go to find a lingering presence, in the scent of his aftershave, the rustle of his silk shirts, the warmth of his suits. As if this contact with the atoms of his living self, no matter how fugitive, would enable me to exorcise his ghost. For part of my grief was being a player in what had turned into a truncated drama, a word unspoken, a dream deferred.
I no longer thought of his room as the scene of my crime. Subconsciously, I had accepted the diagnosis of heart attack as the cause of his death, though the conjunction of circumstances between him and my father would always disturb me. Nor did I think of entering his room as spying, or prying, just the chance to say goodbye in a way I wasn’t able to do before. In fact, I thought the gods had smiled on me to give me this opportunity. But of course I revealed nothing of this to Matron. I just sat there looking as if I was considering, for a very long time, enjoying her anxiety, and then I quietly said yes, I’d be willing to do it.
All I wanted then was for her to hand over the keys and go so I could step across the corridor. But she wasn’t called Matron for nothing, for she lingered, to give instructions. I just needed to go through and sort things into piles, and let her know when I was done so she could send up bags and boxes and someone to do the packing. And would I mind labelling them—she’d send up tape and markers. Winston would come and collect and store them until she had the time to go through and decide what was to be done.
I heaved a sigh of relief when she got up to leave, dangling keys in her hand, though I noticed that instead of his usual bundle on the large ring she carried, there were just two keys on a small ring, similar to mine, one for the front door and one for his room, to be handed over to the next occupant, no doubt. It made me sad, for it seemed to signify such a swift diminution of one’s presence here on this earth.
I was now consumed with anxiety to get going when she paused to say, “Don’t tire yourself, though.” Then, “Are you sure? I could send Annie or one of the girls to help you?”
I wanted to wring her neck. But I gave her my brightest smile and assured her I’d be fine on my own. At least for the start. I’d let her know when I needed help. Then, in case she changed her mind, as now I was desperate to get the job, I assured her I would let her know the minute I felt it was too much for me. Really, I wanted to beat her over the head to make her hand over the keys. Thankfully, I didn’t have to, for she did so, and I greedily closed my hand over them, imagining the warmth they yielded was from him. As soon as she left and closed the door, I held them up to my lips and kissed them. Then hastily put them down again, for she came charging back in.
“Oh, Miss Sam,” she said, her expression hovering between a frown and a smile. “Perhaps you would like to take something for yourself? A memento? Anything you would like.”
I looked at her and nodded and she left, for good this time. I threw up the keys and caught them. A sign of my complete restoration to life.
83
ENTERING MR. BRIDGES’ ROOM was not as hard as I thought it would be, nor was going through his possessions. I felt rather at peace the whole time, as I placed his suits in the garment bags I found with a cedar hanger to repel moths in each one—the first I had seen. As I folded and placed his shirts, his socks and underwear, his dressing gowns, his ties, his cashmere sweaters, in piles on the bed, I couldn’t help remarking how new everything appeared. Even the clothes he wore for gardening—his Tilley shorts and hat, his Lacoste shirts—were washed and neatly folded with the rest, nothing on them to show they had ever come in contact with dirt. I’m sure he must have had a much stronger influence over Mavis the laundress than I had, if she indeed was the one who looked after his clothes. I doubted it, for no such attention was paid to mine.
Didn’t some people wear things out, I wondered? He certainly didn’t need a wife who could mend. Or one who could pack, for that matter, for every item, in the drawers, the closet, was meticulously arranged. In the bathroom, towels were symmetrically aligned on the towel rack, as were his shoes on trees. Mr. Bridges was nothing if not consistent—everything in his room was as neat and ordered as his person had been. I wondered now, could he have been as dependent on his wife for domestic comforts as he claimed? For the state of his possessions certainly didn’t reveal a man in need of anyone.
Even without considering the stuff he must have had at his own house, I was amazed at just how much of everything Mr. Bridges possessed. It was an extraordinary windfall for Matron to dispose of. I thought of how she could use it to buy compliance and favours from the staff, tradesmen, for years to come. And then I suppressed that thought, for I was beginning to think of myself, and Matron, as entirely nice people after all. Perhaps something of the unruffled nature of Mr. Bridges’ life was rubbing off on me.
In the bathroom, I bagged up his m
edicines for disposal, again alarmed by the quantity of both prescription and non-prescription items. Had he needed all of these? It seemed extraordinary. Was he that sick? Was my amazement at such an arsenal of goods simply due to my ignorance of things medical, because, apart from this past week, my own cupboard held nothing but the most basic of first aids?
The medicine collection was the only sign perhaps of a slight disorder, for the bottles on the surface of the counter around the sink were placed there helter-skelter, in no special arrangement, some even turned over on their sides. The medicine cabinet also yielded lots of items, but no surprises.
Mr. Bridges had an equally large quantity of grooming aids, expensive like his clothes. Six or seven bottles each of things like shampoo, conditioner, aftershave, and things I never knew men used: moisturizer, concealer, face wash, cologne. I was beginning to think the owner of this cache might have been slightly vain, but then I replaced that thought with one that this kind of excess was probably perfectly natural for people with plenty of money. Then I backtracked on excess, for I didn’t want to be critical, but perhaps his list of basic necessities was longer than my own. What did I know? I felt the first twinge then of being out of sync with a world that was not now meant to be mine. I was not used to excess. Until I came to live at Ellesmere Lodge, my own cupboard was entirely bare. I wondered then what commentary on one’s life did possessions make. Was mine as threadbare as it seemed? In comparison with someone like Mr. Bridges—or Ruby, for one could hardly move around in her room for the trunks and boxes, for her things—was my life to be judged as empty?