All The Days of My Life (69 page)

She sat quietly on a chair near the bed and waited. On the mantelpiece a pink pottery clock ticked. She heard the birds singing. Later came the voices of Tom and Isabel, in the distance. Then the voices faded. The clock ticked on.

“Do you remember,” said a faint voice from the bed, “that gypsy, Urania Heron?” Mrs Gates's eyes were still shut.

Molly said, in a low voice, “No – I don't.”

“She was Queen of the Gypsies, so they said,” came the murmur from the grey face on the pillow.

“Did they?” said Molly.

“She was famous for telling the future – she said you'd be here when I died. I never guessed that would come true.”

“Now,” said Molly in alarm, although some of the alarm was
assumed, “don't you go thinking what I think you're thinking. You've had a slight stroke, that's all. You're tired.”

“Perhaps,” said Mrs Gates, “but I'm seventy-one now. My mother died at fifty.”

“Get over this,” Molly told her. “And you can be semi-retired. Light jobs.”

Mrs Gates said nothing. Perhaps she was asleep. The doctor came and spent five minutes with her. In the room outside he said to Molly, “Her heart's tired. There's nothing I can tell you.” He looked uneasy. If Molly had spoken with a middle-class accent he could have accepted her as the lady of the house, in attendance on her old nanny. As it was, he could not make out what was happening.

“She looked after me when I was evacuated here – she was very kind to me,” Molly told him.

“Oh,” he said, and it was clear that the news of Tom's marriage to the former Mary Waterhouse was already in circulation. “It's lucky you're here,” he said.

“You don't know what's going to happen, then?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Just make her as comfortable as you can,” he told her.

After he had gone Molly went back into the bedroom and sat down again. She dozed off in her chair and awoke in the hot, silent room, thinking she had heard music in a dream. Mrs Gates was awake and looking at her.

“Oh,” said Molly in confusion. “I dropped off – is there anything you want – cup of tea?”

“Chamber pot,” Mrs Gates said. It was frightening, helping the old lady on to the chamber pot and supporting her while she used it. Afterwards Mrs Gates was exhausted. Molly came back from emptying the pot and sat down again. Then she heard her say, “She said that you'd marry three times – but that two would be no true marriages.”

“She was wrong in that,” Molly said, guessing she was again talking about the gypsy.

“She told me after, one marriage to end at a rope's end.”

“Good God,” Molly exclaimed.

“For children – a girl and a boy – unnatural fruit – a wrong deed but not done wrongly. Close to a fortune, close to a kingdom –” She said a little more but her voice was too faint to catch the words.

“Never mind all that,” said Molly, impressed in spite of herself by
the gypsy's warning about a husband dying by hanging. “You rest, now. I want you fresh for your lunch or you won't eat it.” But dull prickles went up and down her spine. Unnatural fruit? A kingdom? She felt uneasy. As the latch on the door went up she left the room. Vera Harker said, “I brought some fish – the fishman came today. And there's a calf's foot here. I'll make a broth.”

Molly hurried back to the house, deciding that if Tom had not told Isabel she was poor then she must do it, if only to work out who was paying Vera Harker. But as soon as she entered the sitting room she realized the bad news had already been delivered. Isabel was sitting, reading a book. When Molly came in she looked up stonily and then went back to her reading.

“Isabel,” Molly said, sitting down. “How much are you paying Mrs Harker for what she's doing?”

“I hardly think that that's any affair of yours,” said her mother-in-law.

“I thought you might like me to pay her,” Molly said mildly.

“I don't see any necessity for that,” Isabel said coldly.

“It's obvious there are difficulties,” Molly said, trying to tailor her remarks to suit Isabel. “I'm living here now – I'd like to help.” Then, dropping any effort at diplomacy she said, “I know both of you thought I was rich – and now you know I'm not. But if we all pull together I'm sure we can get out of the mess.”

In response to this Isabel simply put her book down on the table next to her and said, “I find this a disturbing conversation, Molly. Tom's wife is Tom's wife. You need not enquire about the wages of people I have asked to help us. You need not discuss your resources, or lack of them, with me. I must go and see about lunch.”

Snubbed, Molly stood there in the middle of the sitting room, for a moment almost convinced that she had been rude and vulgar in attempting to discuss money with her mother-in-law. Then she looked at the cracked paint around the window panes. Money had to be discussed. Then she realized that Isabel had not asked about Mrs Gates. She made a face at the door through which Isabel had gone, as if she were still a child. Then she went upstairs, had a bath, changed her clothes and took a basket down to the village. She bought some food for the evening and packets of seeds at the village stores. She left an order for more supplies and said that she would drive down for them next day. She knew quite well that the old woman behind the counter was the aunt of a girl she had been at school with. She did not
acknowledge the fact and, by acting briskly, like someone in a hurry, prevented the woman from starting to chat. She walked the long lane back to the house with her basket, wishing now that she had taken the car. When she arrived there was no sound in the house. Isabel must be resting. She had not seen Tom all day. She made a cup of tea in the kitchen and carried it outside. Then she went back to the stables. Vera Harker was sitting in a chair, reading a women's magazine. A small pile of material lay on the floor at her feet. She put the magazine down when Molly came in. “There's not much I can do,” she explained. “I don't want to wake her.”

“Did she eat any lunch?” Molly asked.

“I can't even get her to drink anything,” Mrs Harker said.

“I think she ought to be in hospital,” said Molly, the urban woman. Mrs Harker, country bred and still in the tradition of people dying in their own beds, said, “Perhaps you're right.”

“Well,” said Molly, “can you drop a note in at the doctor's this afternoon? I think he should come again. I'll stay here.”

The other woman got up. “I'll get the doctor to run me back in the evening,” she said. She tucked the half-made-up material into a large chintz bag and then waited while Molly wrote a note to the doctor and left.

The afternoon was hotter than the morning. Molly sat, sometimes beside Mrs Gates and sometimes in the room outside. As she watched the motionless face of the sleeping woman it seemed, somehow, to be sinking in. She studied the movements of her chest as she breathed in and out. It was like watching a newborn child, but at the same time she seemed to be waiting for something. Nothing in the room changed. Nothing changed in the condition of the sick woman but, gradually, she felt the room filling with an atmosphere which frightened her. She shooed a fly out of the window. Then she went into the other room and found, in a chest under the window, a small collection of books. Among them was the old copy of Perrault's fairy tales she had been given as a child. In the flyleaf she read her own name, written in careful printing. Mary Waterhouse, Allaun Towers, Framlingham, Kent. She sat, reading the book, by the bed.

At about six o'clock she became alarmed. Mrs Gates had hardly stirred all afternoon. When she bathed her face she muttered something, said “Mary” and then seemed to fall asleep again. Molly wondered if she should not ask the doctor to call sooner or even get an ambulance to collect Mrs Gates and take her to hospital. She thought
of consulting Isabel, but decided she would not be helpful. Instead she decided to leave the flat for a little while. She walked, thinking, down to the neglected verge of the lake and sat on the dried-up bank in a cloud of midges, watching two dragonflies swoop over the water. The five or six large oaks which had stood on the opposite bank had been felled. Only the stumps stood there. There had been an effort to plant some saplings to replace them but only three or four had survived. The others stood with their leaves brown and drooping in the still-hot air. The lake, which had once been so fresh, was low, now, and scummy. The verges around it, which had once been green, were dried-up and neglected. It seemed like a place where bad deeds, acts born of anger and misery, might be done. This was the place to which she had been going to lead her son on his early toddles, would have shown him the wild ducks which alighted there in autumn. This place had been going to nourish him. She had lost Joe, the only man with whom she had shared a love based on gaiety, equality and hope. The house, the lake, the grounds where she had been a child, were supposed to compensate her son for the loss. Now everything seemed irredeemably corrupted, and that, in some way, took Joe further and further from her. Already she felt the house and its occupants, which she had seen as a present she could give her child, to be burdens settling on her shoulders. What a bargain, she thought wryly, to swap mourning a dead husband for nursing a dying woman and sleeping in a collapsing house with an impotent man.

The birds were beginning to roost in the clumps of trees beyond the lake. She had still not decided whether to call the doctor or an ambulance to Mrs Gates but, she thought, when she entered the room again she would see, with fresh eyes, exactly what she looked like.

When she went back into the room Mrs Gates was trying to struggle up into a sitting position.

“Here – here,” Molly cried in alarm. “Let me help you.” She pulled her up against a pile of pillows. She put a glass of water to her lips. Mrs Gates drank some.

“I was looking for you,” she said, leaning back on her pillows.

“You were asleep. I just stepped out for a breath of air,” Molly said. “Would you like a cup of tea, now?”

But she could see from the grey face and the distanced look that Mrs Gates did not want anything. The strange, heavy atmosphere in the room was stronger but now it was not fear Molly felt. It was more like awe. She said, “I don't suppose I ever thanked you enough for taking
care of me when I was a child. You have to be older to appreciate properly the sacrifice it is. It can't have been easy, being landed with a small child, right in the middle of a war.”

“It made me young again,” Mrs Gates said, with an effort. “I never felt young after you left. I didn't feel old – I just didn't feel young.”

“It did a lot for me,” Molly said. “You did a lot for me.”

“Everything's sadly altered here,” Mrs Gates said. “You'll put the place on its feet again.”

Molly could not reveal that she had not yet decided to stay. She said, “I'll do my best,” and wished it did not sound so much like a pledge. Mrs Gates's face had tightened. She was in pain.

“My chest's very tight,” she told Molly.

“I'll lie you down,” Molly said, in a panic.

“Better – propped up,” the old woman said. Molly did not know what to do. She did not want to leave her alone but she could see now that she ought to get help. She thought desperately, too, that Tom or Isabel ought to be here with her.

“The doctor'll be here soon,” she said, studying Mrs Gates closely. “Then he might say we should get you into hospital where they'll make you more comfortable.”

“It's a bit better now,” said Mrs Gates. Her face had relaxed and she seemed to be breathing easily. Molly took her hand and, trying to conceal her anxiety, told her, “I'll stay with you all the time until the doctor comes.”

“I'd like to lie down,” Mrs Gates murmured. Molly took away the pillows and helped her to lie down. She sat beside her, holding her hand.

“Take – my things – bits and pieces,” she whispered. “There's no one else.”

Molly swallowed and said, “Not yet, please God.”

Then Mrs Gates's breathing got worse and Molly held her hand and said, “Don't be frightened. The doctor will be here soon.”

Mrs Gates looked at her and relaxed. She closed her eyes. The breathing got worse until rasping breaths were filling the room. But still Molly did not dare to leave her to call for help. Her breath stopped, then started again. Molly hauled her up, propped her against the pillows and bathed the sweat from her face. She gave her sips of water.

Finally she said, “I must go – I've got to get an ambulance.”

“Don't leave me,” Mrs Gates said. She spoke with difficulty but her
tone was assured. Molly thought she knew how close she was to death. She knew Molly would not leave her and so, as one corner of Molly's brain protested, what a mess, what a mess, where is someone to help me? yet another concentrated on the laboured breathing and the livid face and prompted her to speak phrases she scarcely knew she had in her. “I remember when you used to let me help you hang out the washing on windy days. Do you remember how I used to hold on to the bottom of the sheets while you pegged the tops on the line? Then we'd stand back and watch the wind take them and say they looked like the sails of ships. In a way I was happier then than I've ever been.” Then an instinct would urge her to be silent, to let Mrs Gates rest. Then she would say, “I'm looking forward to having the baby here. Perhaps you'll be well enough, then, to hold him. It must be a long time since there's been a baby in this house. It'll be nice.” Mrs Gates said, in a very low voice, “I – hope – so.” The heaviness of the atmosphere grew in the room. It began to darken. And then, finally, the old woman gave two great, convulsive gasps – and was still. Her head lay at an odd angle on the pillow, looking towards Molly. Molly heard herself groaning aloud into the empty room. As she did so she settled, with calm hands, the grey head on the pillows. Even then she was not sure that Mrs Gates was dead. She only knew that a crisis had come. But as the doctor came in, followed closely by Vera Harker, she was saying, “Oh – my God. Oh – my God.”