Home Fires (23 page)

To begin with, neither of them talked and Caroline found herself anxiously scanning the room, as if the surroundings could offer up a suitable topic for conversation.

Then, out of the blue, Elsa spoke. ‘The thing is,’ she said. ‘I miss him dreadfully.’

For a moment, Caroline was not sure she had heard her properly.

‘Oliver?’ she asked, tentative.

Elsa nodded. ‘I know it’s been a year, but I just can’t seem to shake this feeling of . . .’ She broke off. ‘Churchill called it the black dog, didn’t he? A good description, I’ve always thought. A black dog, trailing me around.’

Caroline stared at her. Her mother-in-law had never once confided how she felt and now that she had, Caroline was not sure what to do.

‘I think it’s only natural, when someone you’ve spent your life with passes away . . .’

‘He died, Caroline. Let’s not prettify it,’ Elsa said. Her face was pale, the lines on her forehead pronounced. ‘I can’t bear it when people mince their words. Pass away. Gone to a better place. Fallen asleep.’ She waved her hand indistinctly in the air. ‘All of that guff.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise. I don’t want you to say everything will be all right. God knows, I’ve got enough people doing that. I just . . .’ Elsa lapsed into silence. Then she looked across the street. ‘Ah. The antiques man is back.’

‘Oh yes,’ Caroline said, confused. ‘But what you were saying about . . .’

‘Please, forget it,’ Elsa interjected. She opened her handbag, took out her lipstick and applied it briskly without a mirror. She smiled, but her eyes remained dull. ‘I shouldn’t have bothered you with it. There’s no reason why you would understand.’

Caroline felt the blow of the last sentence like a physical slap.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course.’

They crossed the road and opened the door to the antiques shop. A bell rang out. The proprietor, a man with white hair and half-moon spectacles, came across to greet them. ‘Anything I can help you with?’

‘Yes,’ Elsa said. ‘I’m looking for a bookcase. About two feet high, good quality wood.’

‘I’ve got just the thing,’ he said and he led them down the stairs towards a French-style dresser, painted in a pale green.

‘Oh that’s beautiful,’ Caroline said.

‘No,’ Elsa said sharply. ‘I’m not fond of all this painted furniture one sees nowadays.’

The man met Caroline’s gaze and shrugged. ‘Of course, well, we do have something rather special that you might prefer. If you’ll just come this way . . .’

The two of them wound their way through a narrow corridor, lined on either side by rows of curve-backed chairs and a series of large, gilt-framed mirrors, the glass speckled with age. Caroline hung back, unwilling to follow. She felt tears prick against her eyes and was frustrated at her own weakness. She must stop taking things so much to heart.

Caroline took a step forwards and, stretching out one arm, she traced the edge of the French dresser with her hand. The wood felt smooth to the touch. When she looked down, she saw a smudge of dust on her fingertip.

The phone rings. Caroline gathers up the blue handkerchief and bundles it back into the filing cabinet before picking up the extension in the spare room.

‘Malvern
668723
.’

‘Mrs Weston?’ says a posh, female voice.

‘Yes.’

‘Oh hi there, it’s Camilla here from Derek Lester’s office.’

She holds her breath.

‘Oh. Right. Hello.’

‘I understand you’ve been wanting to make an appointment to see the minister,’ Camilla is saying and Caroline can hear the tac-tac-tac of someone typing with their fingernails in the background.

‘Yes.’

‘He’s terribly busy at the moment with the by-election,’ Camilla says, ‘and he’s asked if you can get back in touch with him a few weeks from now . . .’

‘A few weeks?’

‘Yes,’ Camilla says, and Caroline gets a clear image of how she might look: an averagely pretty blonde girl with pearl earrings and thick mascara, just out of university. ‘He asks me to send his apologies but I’m afraid there’s nothing he can do for now.’

‘Right,’ Caroline says. ‘Thank you.’

Camilla does not even say goodbye. She simply hangs up. Caroline lets the phone rest by her ear, listening to the dialling tone until she feels calmer. She supposes she shouldn’t be surprised that Lester is stalling for time. In fact, it simply solidifies her suspicions that there is something amiss, that he is trying to hide the truth. She feels a throbbing in her wrists. Her entire body seems electrified, tense.

Then, just as she is about to return to her filing, there is a cry from downstairs, followed by the clatter of something falling. She wonders briefly whether a fox has broken into the house through an open window. And then, too late, she remembers Elsa.

She takes the stairs carefully because her steps seem wobbly and the carpet appears to be shifting beneath her. When she reaches Elsa’s door, she can hear a soft whimpering from the other side. For a moment, she hesitates, then she pushes the door open and a bright yellow light glares out of the room so that Caroline has to refocus her gaze.

Elsa is sitting slumped in the armchair, where Andrew must have put her, and her head strangely angled so that her chin is sliding into her shoulder. Her eyes are stuttering, the lids beating out a frantic metronome. There is a narrow line of brown where the iris is still visible through the translucent, twitching skin. Her mouth is slack, the lower jaw hanging loose as if she is on the brink of saying something but can find no words, only the disjointed, mournful wail she is now making.

Caroline notices how skinny Elsa is, how prominent her skull has become, how, in places, her skin is stretched tightly across her slender body like the surface of a drum. She is moaning gently and a thin line of saliva is trickling out of the corner of her mouth, her lips slack as loose elastic.

‘Elsa?’ Caroline says, hurrying across to her, kneeling down by the armchair and automatically reaching for her pulse. She can feel the brisk thump of it against the tips of her fingers. There is a faintly metallic smell in the air. Caroline draws back the checked blanket from her lap to find a spreading dampness across the seat of the chair, the edges of the stain creeping outwards. She slides her hand round Elsa’s back and finds that her skirt and the bottom edges of her blouse are soaking, the urine warm and clammy to the touch. She sees that Elsa is looking straight at her and that her jaw is moving uselessly up and down but no words are coming out.

‘It’s all right, Elsa,’ she says, patting the back of her hand, but something about her mother-in-law’s eyes – impenetrable, unmoving – starts to scare her. She tries to manoeuvre Elsa out of the chair. ‘It’s all right,’ Caroline says, wrapping Elsa’s arms round her neck. ‘Don’t worry. Now, let’s get you out of these wet clothes.’

The old woman has no strength in her muscles and her arms slip back down almost immediately, like wet bags of sand. Her head is lolling to one side, creasing the thin layer of flesh at the top of her neck. Caroline bends down so that her face is level with hers and she tries to lift up her arms once more. Elsa’s breath smells mossy. It reminds her of damp autumn leaves trodden into mulch at the side of a pavement. Caroline winces.

‘Now, Elsa, I’m going to need you to try and hold on while I lift you up and get you on to the bed,’ she says, deliberately modulating her voice so that it is clear and firm like it used to be when she had to tell Max off for some minor infraction. Elsa seems to squint her assent. Her hearing aid is emitting a high-pitched squeal.

Caroline puts Elsa’s arms around her neck once more, holding on to them with one hand, while she loops the other one round Elsa’s back and attempts to lever her out of the chair. It proves impossible to shift her. Although Elsa looks frail and shrunken, she is a dead weight. Caroline, sweaty and frustrated, straightens herself up.

She is out of breath with the exertion and decides to try and take off Elsa’s skirt with her still sitting in the armchair. At least that way, she would be able to clean her up a little bit. She looks for a clasp or a zip but then realises that the skirt has an elasticated waistband, so she starts to tug at the hem but it is stuck fast to Elsa’s thighs. She rolls Elsa to one side, more roughly than she intended, and struggles to pull the skirt away. Eventually, it comes off, leaving Elsa’s puckered limbs exposed. Her legs are shrivelled and bony. The dirty-white cotton of her pants is almost see-through. She sees Caroline looking at them and tries to move her hands down to protect her modesty, folding them clumsily over the faded patch of her pubic hair, just visible through the fabric. Elsa is embarrassed and Caroline finds that, in spite of herself, she is moved by this realisation; by the knowledge that however incapacitated she is physically, inside she is still the same old Elsa, a woman who takes pride in her appearance; who likes everything to be just so.

Caroline balls up the skirt and leaves it crumpled on the floor in the corner of the room to be washed later. Then she goes to the kitchen to fill up a bowl of warm soapy water. She takes a new sponge out of the cupboard underneath the sink and treads carefully back down the corridor, the water splashing against her wrists.

When Caroline re-enters the room, she sees that Elsa is trying to undo the buttons on her blouse, her fingers plucking at the small pearl circles.

‘Elsa, just leave it,’ she says, putting the water down by her feet. Caroline kneels down next to the bucket and looks her in the face. ‘I’ll do it.’

Elsa looks at Caroline but there is no spark of recognition. Her eyes are blank and then, without warning, the pupils contract.

She shouts out, flapping her hands with great agitation, her neck muscles rigid.

‘What is it?’ Caroline says, holding on to her wrists, trying to calm her down. Elsa manages to get her hands free and looks at Caroline with such loathing that she has to stop herself stepping back. ‘Calm down, Elsa, it’s all right, it’s all right.’ She takes the sponge and dips it into the water, thinking that if she can make Elsa dry and clean, then she might relax, but when Caroline tries to wipe it across her thighs, Elsa starts to writhe in her seat, clawing at the air with her hands. She seems to have rediscovered her strength and the more she squirms, the more difficult it is to sponge her down and the more irritated Caroline becomes. ‘Oh come on, Elsa, I’m only trying to help,’ she snaps. ‘Stop moving around.’

And then, without warning, Elsa slaps her. It is a light slap, a weak imitation of what it should have been, but there is no doubting the forceful intent behind it. Caroline looks at her, stunned.

‘What the . . .’

Elsa is twisting her lips as though chewing something and Caroline realises, all at once, that she intends to spit at her. She moves away, quickly, on her haunches.

‘Away,’ says Elsa, her voice clear and vicious. ‘Get away.’

Then, as quickly as she had transformed, Elsa slumps back into the armchair, her head bent down, the chin sinking back into her chest.

Caroline is sitting in the corner of the room and the edge of the skirting board is pressing into her lower back. Her hands are trembling and when she lifts them, there is a fuzzy indentation on each palm from the pressure of pushing on to the carpet. She is there for a long time, waiting to see what will happen next, unsure of what Elsa will do if she tries to go over to her. After a while, there is a gentle grunting sound, like the clicking of a bicycle gear that has not quite shifted into place. Caroline looks up and sees that Elsa is asleep and snoring lightly. Caroline is intensely – almost absurdly – relieved. She acknowledges, as if for the first time, that her nervousness around Elsa had always bordered on fear. Her mother-in-law had possessed such a forceful personality, underlined by the sense – unspoken, concealed – that she could turn, that her temper was never far from the surface.

Caroline gets up from the floor, hearing her bones crack in protest at the sudden movement. Something clicks painfully in Caroline’s upper arm and her muscles ache from the attempts to wrestle Elsa out of her chair. For a brief second, she thinks of sponging Elsa down while she is asleep and pliable, like a baby, but then she finds that she doesn’t want to. She wants, instead, to leave her there: cold and damp and unable to help herself, at least for a few minutes.

She can still smell the ferric tang of Elsa’s urine hanging in the air. She remembers that blue silk scarf; the pale green French dresser. There she was, her mother-in-law, who had once been so distant, so superior, reduced to this: a shrunken old woman losing her faculties. She walks over to the bucket and she tips it over with her foot, quite deliberately, so that the water gloops and splashes onto the carpet, the soap bubbles popping noiselessly. She glances at Elsa, her face finally peaceful, her mouth agape so that she can see her tongue, the tip of it waxy red. As Caroline watches, a faint spray of goosebumps appears across the top of Elsa’s thighs. She jiggles Elsa’s arm brusquely, saying her name loudly to rouse her.

Elsa wakes, uncomprehending. And then she sees it is Caroline and Elsa’s face is infused with unsurprised, semi-distant recognition, as though she has rung a bell and a maid has appeared.

‘You wet yourself, Elsa,’ she says. ‘You slapped me when I was trying to clean you up.’ And then Caroline walks out of the room, leaving Elsa half-naked and shivering in the armchair, unable to do anything but wait for her return.