Treasures of Time
Page 10
And, at the entrance to the hospital, as Laura turns to go into the visitors’ car park, their thoughts, up to a point, run parallel.
Hugh died here. I came in and out, every day, those last horrid weeks, with that sick feeling inside me all the time. I didn’t care what I looked like; I used to catch sight of myself in mirrors and shop windows and it was a person I didn’t know, clothes put on all anyhow, hair stringy and no make-up. I couldn’t believe it was happening; I thought that kind of thing only happened to other people. It was like a bad dream, but one had always woken up from bad dreams.
The nurses all liked him; he was jokey with them, even when he was so ill; sometimes I was jealous, he seemed almost to prefer them to me. I used to sit by him, hour after hour, reading the paper to him, doing nothing, often, just sitting. I wanted to say things to him. I wanted to say I’m sorry, I can’t help it, I am like this, there is nothing I can do. I wanted to say I know, you think I don’t know, but I do, I always have. Sometimes I have seen myself, like another person, and hated it.
I used to hold his hand. Once, I fell asleep, and when I woke, he had taken his hand away and was staring out of the window.
Hugh died here. I only came twice, those last weeks. It wasn’t for me to intrude, they should have that time alone. I sent things to him with Laura – books and flowers from the garden and newspaper articles he would be interested in.
He was sixty; no great age. My age now.
Laura did not know he was going to die. The doctors told her, but in such a way that she did not have to hear if she did not want to. Every day, she was bright. She said, he is really much better, he sat up for a long time today, they are so pleased with how he is getting on, he will be out by the end of the month, with any luck.
The last time I saw him, we talked about a dig, and about Kate. He used to worry about Kate. He said, ‘What a long time we’ve known each other, Nellie, what years and years. Oh, well…’ We were there together in that narrow hospital room, with sun falling across a blue blanket on his bed. I knew he was going to die. I knew, and yet it was quite all right, quite calm. He was more important to me than anyone else, in all my life.
After he died Laura came to me. She stayed for weeks and months. I used to see her eyes looking out of her face, scared, like a child waking up in the dark, and I could not bear it.
The porter said, ‘Upsy daisy now, lady, easy does it. Will she want the rug round her knees?’
‘I do not want the rug round my knees,’ said Nellie. ‘Thank you all the same.’
Laura said, ‘Thank you very much. I’ll be able to manage on my own now.’ She gave him a nice smile. A tip would be out of place, she decided. A hospital is not like a hotel, or a taxi. She pushed the chair down the long corridors, though Nellie would have preferred to propel herself. In the waiting room, she found a battered and mature number of Country Life and sat reading it, her chair shunted a little apart from the other attendant relatives. Nellie struck up a conversation with an acquaintance made during her time as an in-patient. When her turn was called Laura rose to go into the doctor’s room with her, but was turned back by a nurse: ‘I think not, dear. I expect if you want to Dr Williams would have a word with you after.’ Laura, nettled, returned to Country Life.
When at last Nellie re-emerged she rose. ‘All set, darling? I’ll just pop in and see him myself for a moment.’
She found him tiresome, in fact, Dr Williams. One of those dapper, sexless, pink and white men. He had been a bit too inclined to tell one what was what when Nellie was in hospital. She sat down, without waiting for him to speak, and said, ‘Well, how do you find her? Very little change, I’m afraid.’
‘On the contrary, Miss Peters isn’t doing badly at all. There is a considerable improvement.’
Laura sighed, ‘She can do so little for herself, poor darling.’
The doctor smoothed out the papers on the desk in front of them, tapped them with a pencil. ‘The more that she does, the better, Mrs Paxton. She must be encouraged. I can’t stress that enough. She needs an atmosphere of optimism and encouragement.’
Such a brisk man, Laura thought. Horrid to have around if you were ill. ‘Really?’ she murmured.
‘A complete recovery is perfectly possible. But it depends very much on day-to-day progress, and that in turn depends on the people around her. You are managing all right, I take it, with such nursing as has to be done?’
‘Oh,’ said Laura, ‘one is managing, I suppose, yes, as best one can.’ She sighed again.
‘The physiotherapist is coming regularly, of course?’
That clumpy girl with the Birmingham accent – it was hard to understand how Nellie could stand being closeted with her once a week, but Nellie didn’t seem to mind. One heard them laughing together, though what there was to laugh about, with all those gruesome exercises to be done, it was hard to see. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘she comes.’
He was going on and on, in his rather hectoring way. I hate the smell of hospitals, she thought, and the noises, the way nurses’ shoes squeak on the lino, trolleys rattling around all the time. It makes me think of Hugh’s illness, that I don’t want to think of. She stared coldly at the doctor. He was off on another tack. ‘Recurrence?’ she said, sharply now.
‘I did warn when your sister was first ill that a stroke is very often followed by another. That is not to say that it will be, in her case, we can’t tell, but it is always a possibility.’
‘Oh, I think that’s most unlikely,’ said Laura energetically. What an absurdly pessimistic thing to say, she thought, doctors are supposed to cheer you up, not spread gloom and despondency. ‘No, there’s absolutely no sign of that, I can assure you.’ She got up. What nonsense, of course that is nonsense, Nellie may not be that much better, but she’s not going to die or anything. ‘Well, it’s been so kind of you to talk to me, Dr Williams, and it’s reassuring to hear that Nellie’s improving, though I’m afraid that all the same she is going to be rather dependent on one for a long time to come.’ She walked quickly out of the room, gathered up Nellie, hurried to the car. She felt a bit sick, her stomach heaved; it is rushing off so soon after breakfast, she thought, it upsets me, next time we must get the appointment for later on.
She talked, feverishly, all the way home. And what has got into her, Nellie thought, I know that voice, that look, it is when something has rattled her, when she is anxious. When the chasms yawn.
All my life, she thought, I have been exasperated by my sister. And unendurably sorry for her.
‘That’s all right,’ said Tony. ‘You didn’t get too much of a roasting from Kate, I hope. You do get pissed rather easily, don’t you? Look, what I was phoning about is, I’m going down to Danehurst on Friday to have a look through these papers of Hugh Paxton’s – Laura said something about bringing you and Kate down, I gather Kate’s car’s in dock, is that right? Fine. Right. Well now look, I’m in the studio till six at the earliest so it might save a bit of time if you came along there, and then we can get straight off. Good. Just wait in reception and I’ll be with you as quickly as I can.’
But in the event, there was a message awaiting them that Mr Greenway was delayed, and would they go through to the studio. A girl conducted them there and Tony broke free from a knot of shirt-sleeved figures to greet them. ‘Look, I’m so sorry, it’s been one of those days when not one bloody thing goes right. I thought, rather than kick your heels out there you might as well see what goes on here. We’re not actually recording, but I’m tied up for another twenty minutes or so. Marni will fill you in.’ He was breathing heavily, as though he had just taken vigorous exercise; his face shone with sweat.
It was amazing, Tom thought, that so many people should be required for whatever it was they were about (some discussion programme, as far as he could see). So many people walking around or standing in groups apparently locked in furious argument, or perched up in little seats behind cameras or squatting on the ground with earphones on, muttering aw
ay to no one. There was, indeed, an atmosphere of exhausted frenzy, bearing out Tony’s claim. A thin, handsome girl wearing a boiler suit of manifestly fashionable cut walked quickly past them, her knuckles ground into her temples. ‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘just sweet Jesus, that’s all.’ A man holding a clip-board shouted after her, ‘Look darling, either we chuck the lot or we think again. No way do I compromise.’ Up in the shadowy heights of the roof, a voice was shouting in some purely technical language. Cables hung around like lianas. Spotlights swivelled, and hit you savagely in the eye. Everyone smelled of sweat.
Tom thought of the nation, at the receiving end, slumped before its television set in torpid contemplation, teacup in hand.
‘O.K.,’ said Tony, joining them, ‘we’re packing it in now. Terribly sorry to have kept you. Lovely to see you, Kate.’ They went out to the car. Kate asked questions, politely; she had not, Tom knew, been at all interested. He said to Tony, ‘That all seemed an amazing amount of hassle. I shall bear it in mind when next I’m watching something.’ Tony said, ‘What?’; he was clearly stupid with exhaustion.
On the outskirts of London they stopped for a drink. Tony, picking up, said, ‘It’s awfully good of Laura to lay on this dinner tonight. Meeting Paul Summers will be a great help to me.’
Kate said sharply, ‘Dinner? I thought it was just us?’
‘Oh no. I gather she has Summers coming, and some people called Hammond, is it? Hammond, Hamilton. And someone else, I think.’
Typical, thought Kate. Not saying. So we arrive in the wrong clothes, and she can say, probably in front of everyone, Kate darling I do think just a little bit of an effort might have been made. And later, to me, and Kate dear I wonder if you could ever so tactfully sometime hint to Tom that when people are coming in… I know it’s tricky for him, to know what’s what, as it were.
‘Ah,’ said Tom, ‘fifteen love to Laura. Neat. And who’s Paul Summers?’
Kate took a gulp at her drink. ‘Paul Summers was Dad’s right-hand man, sort of. He was Field Officer at the Council for years and years. He’s something quite grand now, himself.’
‘Ministry of the Environment,’ said Tony.
‘Can I have another drink? It’s going to be an awful evening – so don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
‘There you all are,’ said Laura. ‘At last. Kate darling there’s just time for you to pop up and change, I can’t think you’ll feel comfy like that.’
‘I’ll be all right, Ma, thanks.’
‘What a very dashing shirt, Tom. You’re happy as you are too, are you? Well, come and meet people, then.’
Old and young and mid-way, thought Nellie, watchful from the fireplace. A funny mixture, by and large. Interesting, though perhaps not quite in the way Laura thinks. Paul Summers has aged a lot. The television man looks in need of fresh air. The Hamiltons have so perfected the art of self-preservation they appear to be embalmed: those pink and white faces, that neatly waved grey hair. Kate is off her guard and must beware. Tom is a very rapid consumer of gin and tonic. This friend who is something in the National Trust I do not think I care for.
Laura thought, of course people like Tom and Tony thing may turn out to be someone in the end, you never know, one forgets they have hardly even begun. Once, James Hamilton wasn’t anyone in particular. Or John Barclay. She patted the sofa beside her and said, ‘John, do come and sit here and tell me all about your book, when is it coming out?’ I have always rather liked queers, she thought, there is something about the way they look at you: cosy and a bit suggestive too. Paul has got fat; he is quite high up now, Nellie says; I used to find him rather sticky, in the old days.
Does a man like this well-fed well-barbered well-spoken civil servant, Tom wondered, does he end up thus because he has so chosen and to that purpose dexterously steered his life, or has he become like that because of what has happened to him? I never saw a man with such clean finger nails. And the bloke who goes round country houses making lists of Grinling Gibbons fireplaces, does he wear a spotted bow tie and suggest a slight but well-controlled touch of the Augustus Johns by inclination or association? Do we choose, or are we chosen? I should rather like to know, being at the point of one or the other. At least Laura seems to be being free with the drink tonight, anyway.
Tony, leaning confidingly towards Paul Summers, talked of the programme on Hugh Paxton. Presently, diaries were brought out, an arrangement pencilled in.
Laura led them through to dinner, disposed them round the table.
‘Tell me,’ said James Hamilton to Tom, ‘how is Oxford?’
‘What you will have to watch out for,’ Paul Summers was telling Kate, ‘is getting trapped in the museum treadmill. Keep an eye out for other openings.’
‘… always marginally prefer Wilton,’ said Barbara Hamilton, ‘though Stourhead is unforgettable.’
‘Of course I dine in All Souls once or twice a year.’
‘… the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments.’
‘… know the Pagets rather well, at Hornby Castle.’
Once, Nellie thought, I ate a meal at this table, time out of mind ago, and my younger sister Laura sat over there, with her back to the window, looking, I thought, a bit bored because Hugh and I were talking shop, on and off. She came, I think, because she was at a loose end and it was a nice day and she was curious, perhaps. She called Hugh Mr Paxton and tried to ask intelligent questions about the dig. And in the middle of saying something I saw his eyes on her, and how they were, and all of a sudden the day wasn’t so nice after all. It had gone cold. Time out of mind ago, that was. Or should be.
That mark on the dresser, Kate thought, that little gash you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t know about it, is where once Ma slammed down a big flowery jug and it broke. They had been shouting at each other; he stood over there by the window and she stood there by the dresser and I watched from the hall, where they didn’t know I was. ‘… only doing what you do yourself, Laura,’ he said. ‘I know, you know. I always have.’ I swung on the bannister, watching; they were like people in a pretend thing, I thought, a cinema or the pantomime. ‘Know, you know,’ I hummed to myself. ‘Know, you know. Doing what you do. Know you do.’ And Ma’s face was all red and angry and she banged the jug down and it broke into great big flowery pieces.
People were having quite a lot to drink. Some people. Tom was filling up his glass and saying that no, he didn’t in fact dine much in All Souls. He had had lunch in St Peter’s last year, he offered helpfully, in the Buttery. James Hamilton had turned now to Laura and was wondering what quirk of fate it was that led one so often to make the right, fortunate decision – talking to Tom here about Oxford reminds me that it was simply my housemaster having a brother at Wadham that took me there rather than elsewhere, for which thanks be, because there was Barbara, the Dean’s pretty daughter (he raised his glass to Barbara, who raised hers prettily back) and…
‘Oh,’ said Laura, ‘I think one is always making the wrong decisions. I could have gone to art college, but I didn’t.’
‘Do you think you’d be different, Ma?’
‘Goodness, I don’t know.’
‘Of course,’ said Tony, ‘choices are only random up to a point, aren’t they? Shall I do this or shall I do that. Most of them get thrust on us by social circumstance, or economic.’
‘You young,’ said Barbara, ‘didn’t have the war, of course, and all that that implied.’
‘Quite. But I was thinking less of being shaped by history than vaguer sort of processes like what is available at a particular time, by way of education or jobs or simply convention, what sort of things your sort of person does. Which is history of a kind, I suppose.’
‘Nowadays,’ said Laura, ‘as far as I can see you get all sorts of people doing all sorts of things.’
‘Confusing, isn’t it?’ said Tom. He met Laura’s blue stare across a vase of what looked to him like carefully-arranged weeds and bent his head hastily to his plate again.
‘Get in a muddle,’ said Laura, ‘and most of them don’t know what they want anyway. Mrs Lucas’s sister’s boy has got a job at Harwell. Let’s hope he doesn’t blow us all up. Mrs Lucas only has to look at the washing-machine for it to go wrong.’
Take my own particular pond, James went on smoothly, now frankly one of the pleasures of impending retirement is to leave the Service with a sense of how very much its recruitment has changed since my own youth. We are broader based. I like it.
I don’t, thought Laura, and I bet you don’t really either, only it doesn’t do to say. ‘Gooseberry fool?’ she said. ‘Tom? Paul?’
‘Thanks,’ said Tom. He squinted at the bowl in front of him. The little green bits are hemlock, I should imagine, last resort of the socially threatened. I expect it grows wild in these parts. He picked up his glass, and put it down again, feeling Kate’s eye upon him.
‘Thanks, Laura,’ said Paul Summers. ‘Lovely. I remember your gooseberry fool from the old days. You know, following on what was being said I can’t help thinking of Hugh and remembering the way he came to the Council, to the Directorship, which had a smack of the random about it, I suppose. His application came in late – in fact there was a bit of bother about whether it could be allowed – and then just the week or so before the appointing committee met, the article on Charlie’s Tump was in Antiquity, and everyone was talking about it, and I suppose that swung the balance. A lot of people had thought Matlock would get the job.’
‘That cup from Charlie’s Tump is quite lovely,’ said Barbara. ‘The gold one. One would adore to have a modern replica.’
James Hamilton swilled his wine-glass, thoughtfully. ‘Interesting. Good timing – that particular dig came at the right moment for him. Did he know what would be there, Laura?’