Age (8 page)

‘What a fine spread,’ I say. ‘Though we don’t eat many sweets.’ I reach for a cup, though. I so need that hot liquid repair. The waiter quickly pours me one. He’s ruddy-cheeked, observant. I don’t wish to clock my bodily processes but these days I can almost identify each—chest, bowel, veins—each an old pensioner holding out its cup. Only the brain will not speak to me direct.

The two Sisters have seated themselves at the second table.

Gemma says, ‘Why don’t they sit with us?’ Though she too has not yet sat down.

The two sit silent, like domestic help discussed.

‘They like to sit at the window,’ Gertrude says. ‘They need to see the world.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I am seeing it, Gemma, aren’t I?’

Yes—she has got us to come.

Again Gemma ignores her. ‘Sister—’

They look up, in tandem.

‘You teach—dying as a vocation?’

Sister McClellan says: ‘Theirs, yes. Not ours. Or not yet.’

Sister Bond says more softly: ‘We sponsor them. Toward it.’

Their charge says: ‘They say dying is a state of being. Just as living is, they say.’

I see how they would need to sit to one side, and repair. I want to sit with them. I take an armchair nearby. Gemma takes another, nearest me.

Gertrude says: ‘Kit and Sherm are late.’

Not a quiver from the Sisters, though they may know why.

‘I spoke to Kit yesterday morning,’ Gemma says. ‘They planned on leaving. For New Hampshire.’

I don’t like seeing those two faces that near—Gertrude’s and Gemma’s. One lifting her sharpened chin as if to say, ‘I’m dying. I can take it,’ the other rounding her shoulders, ‘I’m living. So can I.’

‘The rats—’ Gertrude says. ‘But their ship is sinking too.’ When I knew her she didn’t used to shrug. She didn’t have to. ‘So they’ve left, have they, those two mercenaries. With not even a good-bye.’

The Sisters rise, to sit in her table’s two empty chairs.

‘No other takers,’ she says, looking up at them. ‘So shall we get this show on the road? Go back home, I mean.’

‘We would have to ask—’

‘—Mr Acker.’

In posture too they are in perfect balance, a Yes and a—Perhaps. Gertrude peers at the table in front of her; she must not see too well. ‘I don’t relish sweets anymore either, even if allowed.’ She glances up at us. ‘The stuff they do allow me—you wouldn’t believe. Last night—caviar. Malossol. Acker can afford it. All right, girls—cable him.’

‘To come over?’ Gemma says.

‘Him? Rupert—you tell her.’

‘I have.’ But a woman like my wife doesn’t quite hear that kind of thing. ‘Gertrude probably hasn’t seen Acker in years.’

‘Three. The house at Wandsworth’s been going for just over two … Well, Rupert? Go on.’

‘Gertrude’s always lived by projects, for which people pay.’

The father started that, the brothers kept on with it. Maybe they’re dead now but I wouldn’t bank on it. More likely—they’ve left too. I was only one of her long train of nonfamily. Acker would be the last.

‘Rupert. You’re not as honest as you once were.
Men
paid, Gemma.’

To give Gertrude her rightful due, she always thought up projects that interested them. Often quite charitable ones, as now. Or, as in my case, the project was the man himself.

‘Generally, they paid to leave,’ she said. ‘But Rupert wouldn’t—pay. He tell you that, Gemma?’

No, I never had. How I did what I had to do, on my own.

I can scarcely see him, that young man whom the animal farm so helped. Wrestling of a night with a calf getting born, one of my own stock, and with the page I was trying to make my own too. Which I could do only if I paid no one for my getaway.

Sister McClellan cleared her throat. Sister Bond coughed.

‘Okay, ladies.’ Gertrude’s voice was fainter. I had to admire it for still staying so American. ‘They want me to remember I’m dying. In the hospice they like us to say that, at least once a day. Even though—they can tell.’ Her skin did seem grayer than when we entered. Her hair, surely coiffed that morning, hung like rope. Sister Bond leaned forward to wipe her mouth for her.

‘I was a baby philanthropist without money,’ Gertrude said then. ‘Or just a smart baby—at least in New York. Where they call you “on the make”—if you make them pay for it. The British welfare state and I took to each other right away. Hobbies can be indulged without guilt. If they’re for the common good. And I got quite bright at thinking those up. You only have to look around you.’ She put out a hand, blindly.

Nurse Bond gave her a kind of inhaler on which she breathed twice.

Nurse McClellan said, ‘There.’

When Gertrude was again able she said to my wife, ‘How honest are you two? With each other.’

‘About—living—do you mean?’ Gemma said.

‘Pretty damn good, I’d say,’ I said.

‘Hush, Rupert,’ Gertrude said faintly. She used to say ‘Shut up.’ Then she reached out again—‘Bond’—and Nurse Bond gave her the apparatus again, while Nurse McClellan breathed: ‘I’m here.’ In unison they chanted to four, then took the inhaler away.

‘Mar-vel-lous
—’ Gertrude whispered to them. ‘Marvelous. Stand by.’ She sat up straighter, taking it slow. I saw the beat in her breast. To see that in a breast one remembers—is a payment. ‘No, friends,’ she said. ‘Honest about dying.’

Gemma waited for me to answer, maybe too long. Was she also—hesitant? ‘It’s not as easy for two—as it is for one.’

When she raised her head our eyes met. Gemma, I wanted to whisper, I didn’t know it was the same for you.

That we should have had to come here to admit this, I thought. Even if neither of us said it aloud. Turning, I saw that the Sisters were nodding to Gertrude. Who nodded back.

‘My first hospice death—’ she said. She stopped and took breath. ‘My friend Ivan. I visited him there. An older man. Quite alone … actually. Gay. Kept the ward in a giggle. “Get drunk on death,” he’d tell them, “in the company of friends.” I asked what I could bring them all … It was he who advised the caviar.’

‘Some prefer black pudding,’ said one of the two at the window.

‘Takes all kinds,’ the other said.

I could no longer distinguish which Sister spoke.

Gertrude’s voice was clear. ‘“The classless society, old dear … quite restful at the end” … Ivan said.’

‘Of course, some are beyond asking—’ came from the window.

‘—But not you, Mrs Acker.’

Gertrude sat up. Or tried to. The Sisters came to her on the instant, pedaling there softly, in the way good nurses fly. They lifted her up, one on either side.

‘I held his hand at the end,’ Gertrude said. ‘I was … his family.’

Both Sisters were now wiping the pink foam from Gertrude’s lips. They had an easy-handed system. While McClellan held her, Bond wiped. Then they shifted. One felt how often they must have practiced it.

When her eyes rolled up in her head they held her higher.

‘She’s fainted,’ I heard myself breathe.

‘Champagne
now,’
one Sister said softly.

The other, reaching to a low shelf on a table behind her, brought out a bottle the waiter must have left with us, drew its cork, poured, and brought the glass to Gertrude’s lips.

‘Champagne, dear. You asked for it.’

‘And there’s enough, dear, for the family.’

Then—with the slightest headshake between them, Gertrude’s glass was put down. Then Gertrude herself was lowered flat.

‘Why, she’s dying—’ I must have said aloud.

Beside me, Gemma said: ‘She’s dead.’

There was a rattling sound from the wheelchair.

Once more the Sisters lifted Gertrude’s body up, this time putting pillows behind it. The mouth was open but no longer producing foam. The chest seemed to be breathing by itself.

‘… Gertrude dear …’

‘… We are here, Gertrude …’

The Sisters were speaking in unison now, in the way one enunciates a creed many times said. The words came in such a rush and in so dual a rhythm that I couldn’t catch them, and perhaps not even Gertrude was meant to hear anything except that the Sisters were at hand.

Then one said to me, Hold her hand, and the one on Gertrude’s other side said the same to Gemma, but even looking at them I could not have said which was which, their service had so exalted them.

Then one bent over the body to say, We made a very good tea, Gertrude; the one on the body’s other side said as clearly, Thank you, dear, and both smiled at us, their hands free.

I am left holding Gertrude’s right hand, Gemma the left.

Next to me, a soft voice says in my ear: Say something to her now. The other Sister is at Gemma’s ear.

Gemma did say something, bless her. I couldn’t hear what.

I bend to Gertrude. I see no resemblance, even to the woman who an hour ago had said to me—Is it you? Down at the core of this semblance, though, there must be a consciousness that resembles everything the body was in life. And the hand holds on.

I say what I know she wanted me to. ‘Yes—it’s you.’

A
FTERWARD, SISTERS MCCLELLAN AND
Bond were most sweet to Rupert and me. No, we two must rest a moment before we went; it was always a shock, no matter who. And talking a bit afterward always helped, no matter to whom.

I saw that Rupert really was somewhat in shock; we had better stay on a bit. Besides, I was interested, though fearful of being drawn in—the way one is when one accepts a ‘free consultation.’

‘And no matter how the patient dies?’ I said.

In the most modest way, they declined to accept my hostility. They had met such before.

‘We think we make a difference.’

McClellan was not as hard as she looked, I decided.

‘There are many like us.’

And Sister Bond was not that soft.

In the next room, the morticians were already present. The hotel would have a routine, of course.

‘I don’t know how it is with your nurses over here.’ Bond’s expression suggested she thought she did know. ‘I rather suspect they’re trained to do a job. A very good job, I’m sure. But with us—nursing is a
vocation!

‘No matter the specialty,’ McClellan said.

From the next room, someone knocked.

‘They’ll be ready with her now—’ one said, and the other: ‘We always see them out. Our people.’ There was a moment when I thought they might be going to ask Rupert and me to join them. Then they said, in their almost chorus: ‘Would you care to use the facilities?’

As I said to Rupert later, for a minute I wasn’t sure which facility they meant, until they indicated that this second sitting room we were in also had a bathroom.

Rupert used it first, then I. As I was peeing, I heard Gertrude being escorted out. I could think of myself as the surviving wife if I wanted to, and in a way I did, washing my hands carefully at the tap.

‘I suppose we must wait for them,’ Rupert said when I came out. ‘Only polite.’

I wanted to walk to the window to see the view from up here. These days I seldom find myself on such a high floor, and the bird’s-eye relationship of buildings is worth study. But it somehow wasn’t part of today’s deal.

Rupert, too, is immobilized. ‘Lucky they have a suite.’

‘Oh, we had to … Oh, we banked on it…’ we hear from behind us.

How noiselessly they have come back, how unchanged. How reassuring it must be, to their patients, their ‘people,’ that those headdresses never slip. Their uniforms, too, stay so unmussed that day after day, watching from bed or chair, one might be forgiven for hoping that the starch they use is mixed with immortality. Which those soft gestures of theirs will one day confer.

Too sweetly perhaps. Do I find that horrifying?

Then why had I said what I had to Gertrude, at her end?

‘You banked on us—didn’t you, Sisters?’ I say.

They aren’t shocked. They must get all sorts of reactions, when they draw outsiders in. As they must do with intent. Have to do, to perform their—job.

‘No one else would come …’

‘… would come.’

It’s only our specialty, their stare, not plaintive, seems to say. As with the hotel and the mortician, they would have certain routines. Deferent enough, say, to address the patient formally almost to the day, then warming in at the death with the Christian name, as a family servant might. Speaking all the while in chorus so as not to infringe personally, yet coping close.

‘Well … she died as she lived,’ Rupert said.

The Sisters stand quite still.

I feel their disapproval. So must he.

I want to say to them—Don’t you dare impugn those who are not in your sect, not of your persuasion. Those of us who, against all your charitableness know we will die a raging, lonely, irreligious death. A single one, whether or not a boon companion exists. Or existed. You two are nurses, not nuns.

They put out their hands to us in the softest gesture, not touching us quite. As if we need this surely, but they will hold off until we are drawn in—perhaps not by them.

‘Dying
is
living,’ Sister McClellan said.

I wait for Sister Bond to follow with the proper echo—will it be Living is Dying?—but she does not.

Why—they’re quite ordinary women, I see, gathering their own strength. Wanting to be drawn in. Having a specialty doesn’t mean you don’t need to be warmed.

Rupert saw that, as he always does. Did he also intend more? He says: ‘One day—we may drop in on you at Wandsworth. Never seen a real hospice in operation. I’m sure you do—yeoman work there.’

The two of them turn to each other, then to the room, surveying the Plaza’s broad chintzes, tireless armchairs, plastic ice-bucket, and the desk’s array of cardboard advice.

‘This is a hospice,’ they said.

W
HEN WE COME OUT
of that hotel, the world that people call real is quivering all around us. I test it as I do each day now, to see how much we are still part of it.

‘Let’s go to the duck pond,’ Rupert says. He still misses his farm. He sold it in exchange for family life and does not regret his bargain, he says, but the farm had places to accommodate feelings he can put nowhere else. Sometimes he enumerates them. Ledges the moss has budged, where other force cannot. Water eternalizing stone—if you could wait long enough. Manure fruity in the barn, and encouraging to the rose. Deer pellets on the garden crop may keep away that dark lout, the woodchuck. Birds in the trees chip chip away mind. ‘I have a bird goes
psyche, psyche, psyche
,’ he told me the first time we met. ‘Three hours of that while you feed the animals and there’s nothing in your head but cloud. Now all I need is a wolf at the door to keep me moving. Or a wife.’