Is There Anything You Want? (11 page)

He was a monster, that man. His behaviour had been outrageous. There was no excuse whatsoever for it. But it wasn't Adam Nicholson's disgraceful shouting which worried her most, it was the thought of what Dot might have said to provoke it that upset her.
Had
Dot said she was patronising? Had Dot complained to Adam about her? Had Dot accused her of being a do-gooder? No. She didn't believe it. Dot couldn't have done, wouldn't have done. It was unbelievable. Dot and she had always been friends. She had always helped, and often indulged Dot, and Dot had
always been grateful. Adam had somehow twisted whatever Dot had said. He'd probably found the biscuits and it had come out that Dot had been treated to them. But if he thought he could ruin her friendship with his wife he was greatly mistaken. Once she got Dot on her own it would all come out, how he'd, no doubt, bullied her and resented her being given a treat. Dot would tell her the truth. Probably Dot would have heard him hurling his vulgar abuse – she could hardly have avoided hearing – and was even now sick with shame and embarrassment. Mrs Hibbert nodded her head as she came to this conclusion, and then made her tea.

It helped, sipping the hot liquid, but she felt drained and sad and a little tearful. She wondered if it would be wiser not to call for Dot next week – now that would make Adam suffer! Dot would have to rely on the corner shop which was much more expensive than the supermarket and didn't sell fresh meat or fish. Adam Nicholson would soon regret his outburst. He and Dot had no one else to rely on. Their own daughter wouldn't be of any use, she never had been, and since Adam had turned her out of the house she had to sneak back into it to see her mother without his knowing (not that she made the effort very often). But if she didn't turn up to take Dot shopping as usual, would Dot ring her? It was tempting to find out. She rather liked the idea of Dot having to ring her – it put the ball into her court and was perhaps the most satisfactory way of dealing with this unpleasantness. Years ago, when she'd first said to Dot that if there was anything she wanted at the supermarket she'd be happy to take her when she went herself, Dot had been thrilled at the invitation but had nevertheless said she'd have to ask Adam if it was all right for her to go. Hearing this, Mrs Hibbert had reflected that Dot needed a lot more than help with shopping. She needed help to stand up to her husband. She had absolutely no life of her own. How she'd survived the constant crushing of her spirit was impossible to fathom.

And yet Mrs Hibbert was bound to admit to herself that Dot must have an inner strength not to have broken down or fled from her husband. It was such a mystery, how she'd managed to put up with his tyranny. Yet there she was, fragile maybe,
nervous and anxious perhaps, but also always cheerful and smiling and putting up with things.

There was some secret there, something to be envied after all, and Mrs Hibbert wished she knew what it was. Dot didn't want anything that really mattered from anyone. Whatever it was, she had it.

COMING OUT OF
the supermarket, Rachel saw her, that woman, the Friend of St Mary's, the one who'd taken her arm that day. She was getting into her car, parked right next to Rachel's own car. Rachel lingered, feeling strangely reluctant to risk being recognised, though she knew the chances of Mrs Hibbert – she'd remembered the name – knowing her were slight. Still, she waited. A tiny woman meanwhile staggered with an overloaded trolley up to Mrs Hibbert's car and tried to open the boot. Mrs Hibbert got out. Some sort of confusion ensued and voices were raised, but she couldn't catch any words. Finally, the boot was closed and the two women got into the car and drove off.

Following them, minutes later, Rachel thought how her own behaviour had been typical. She was always avoiding people, for no reason whatsoever. Coming to live here at all had been a sort of avoidance. Avoiding her family, avoiding old school friends, avoiding the entire area in which she had spent her childhood, and why? No good reason. She didn't hate her family, or her friends, and the place where she'd been born and brought up was pleasant. But she'd left. She'd left everyone and everything she'd known in London to move north, in direct contrast to most of her contemporaries. She'd wanted to live in a town where she'd soon know every street and building, just as her grandparents had done. She'd wanted to get out of the confusion of London – so many streets, so many houses, so much choice of every kind on offer and never a hope of sampling it
all. They'd thought her mad, of course. ‘Not exactly a good career move,' her father had said, but then he hadn't any idea what sort of career she'd wanted.

She was taking the long route now, in a wide arc round the town. More avoidance. This way, she avoided passing close to St Mary's, though it was impossible entirely to blot out the sight of its main building which still could be glimpsed through the trees. A foolish decision, to come this way. It meant a 2-mile detour and the tedium of having to queue at three sets of traffic lights before she reached home. But if she'd taken the direct route, her eyes would have caught the sad sprawl of dilapidated buildings spread out round the base of the hill and it would, as ever, have depressed her. Familiarity had not bred indifference. Always, the buildings themselves got to her. She hated to think of the patients lying behind those closed windows, and it seemed to her that a horrible, composite hospital smell wafted its way through the doors and into her car. She liked to keep away from St Mary's.

She should go home to London this weekend, but she wasn't going to, she hadn't actually promised. She'd gone home after that first visit to the clinic, when they'd told her the news and then what they were going to do. She'd needed to test herself. Could this
thing
be kept secret from them? From all of them? Could she get through a weekend without blurting it out? Was it possible, considering the state she was in? When she knew what was scheduled to happen? Was it fair, to them, to herself? Was it unnatural to want to conceal something so important? Probably. Once she'd admitted this to herself, she'd felt better. She'd never behaved as a daughter with loving parents would be expected to behave, so why should she now? She was the odd one out in her family and they all knew it. Her sister, who lived only five minutes away from their parents, was in and out of their house all the time and seemed never really to have left home in spite of being married and having children. And her two brothers, though they lived further away, slotted back into their places in the family with no difficulty at all whenever they returned. It was just Rachel. She couldn't function properly there any more. She was 38 and had her own life, but being at home
made it vanish and that scared her. Three nights were the most she could endure being there, but this had been accepted for a long time now. Her father no longer wondered aloud why she bothered to come home at all and her mother no longer made excuses for her – they were resigned to her peculiarities, maybe even more than that. It had crossed Rachel's mind that her parents were not actually sorry to see her go, though nothing was ever said or directly intimated. Her mother would sometimes ask ‘You are happy, darling, aren't you?' and she would reassure her that she was.

That weekend after the first visit to the clinic, three years ago, she'd tried hard to be especially cheerful and friendly, but soon realised this was a mistake. It caused comment. ‘You're a little ray of sunshine this time,' her father said. ‘Had some good news?' The irony of this was hard to take but she'd called it forth herself. And it had decided her: she would tell them nothing. What was the point? Their concern would not help her. They suspected nothing, why should they, and living so far away she would not be under their scrutiny. She'd come back to her own home perfectly clear as to how she would manage things and manage them she had. She'd kept up her regular phone calls without difficulty, helped by the fact that though regular they'd followed no absolute set pattern. Sometimes, especially during the radiotherapy sessions, it had been surreal chatting about every triviality she could think of when something so important was going on, but she'd kept going. She'd given herself full marks, and still did. But, walking out of the hospital after each appointment at the clinic, it was strange the way she always thought of her parents' home. Her mother, she'd decided, was a bit like that Friend who'd helped her, Mrs Hibbert, though physically there was no resemblance. She loved to help people, or think she was helping them, and had the same unwittingly smug pride about doing so, liking to detail precisely how helpful she had indeed been. She had the habit of ending some account of how she'd helped someone with the words, ‘I think they were grateful, I think what I did was appreciated.' It made Rachel shudder.

They'd asked, in the hospital, before the operation, if she had someone at home who could look after her while she was
convalescing, and having the radiotherapy. She'd said yes, her partner, though she no longer had a partner. They'd been satisfied with that. They knew nothing of her personal life in spite of all the notes they'd taken. It had worried her slightly that in fact she might need help when she came home and she'd rung round a few nursing agencies to check out what kind of help might be available. The replies had been quite encouraging – if need be, she could engage a nurse, and she could easily afford it. And she had a girl who came to clean her house who, she was sure, would be willing to shop for her. But in the event, she hadn't needed help, except for the journey home, because the hospital wouldn't let her leave on her own. Her friend Annette had collected her and there had been no harm in her knowing the truth. They were not intimate friends but they'd known each other for the twelve years they'd been neighbours and had grown to depend on each other in a loose kind of way which left neither of them feeling beholden. ‘I don't want any fuss, I'm fine,' Rachel had said, and Annette had nodded and after seeing her into her house (where, unasked, she had left provisions and put the heating on) had left her in peace, telling her to ring, or even just thump on their party wall, if she needed anything. ‘I'm always there, if there's anything you want,' Annette had said, which was very sweet of her but echoed rather too accurately Rachel's mother's oft-repeated words at the end of every phone call, ‘We're always here, dear' – as though that wasn't obvious.

She'd wept, that first night out of St Mary's. She hadn't wept out of pain – she wasn't in much pain – or out of fear, but out of pity for her body. She hadn't done anything wilfully stupid like look in a mirror at the scar, but she hadn't needed to, she could feel it and knew what it must look like. She'd wept, and then she was done. It had been quite luxurious to be able to weep alone, away from sympathetic eyes, but it had to stop or she would be turned into a pathetic shadow of her former strong, resolute, independent self. She didn't weep during all those weeks of radiotherapy, but sometimes she'd come close to it, always at the same point, just as she was descending the stairs into the basement where the radiotherapy department was housed, in the bleakest, most run-down area of the hospital. She
always had to stop, half-way down, and get a grip, clutching tightly at the hand-rail and breathing deeply till her heartbeat had calmed down. Then she had always managed to continue, arriving cool and calm-looking, even smiling a greeting at whomever was going to operate the machinery that day.

Exactly why keeping her feelings strictly to herself made her feel better she wasn't sure. It avoided explanations, for one thing, and explanations as to her state of health were upsetting. They would, if truthful, alter her identity in the minds of others. She wouldn't be Rachel Hurst, solicitor, but Rachel Hurst who, poor thing, had cancer. It wasn't shame she felt – or she hoped it wasn't – or even embarrassment, but a determination not to allow herself to be treated differently. She was
not
different, she was the same person. George would have understood exactly, but George had gone before all this began. Three years of loving and being loved had ended: the scar it left hurt far more than her physical scar. He wasn't going to come back, she'd accepted that. She would have liked to be able to try to tell him how she felt about the cancer. He'd have grasped how she wanted not to have a body any more, only a mind.

Partly to shut thoughts of George out of her mind, she decided to go for a walk – she had the day off – as soon as she'd put the shopping away. She set off, not knowing in which direction she would go, but drawn as she always was to the river and the twisting path along it leading to the old stone bridge. Most of the town was to the west of the bridge, and the river path continued on that side, passing under one of the arches of the bridge, but she decided to cross it and explore the east side, which she rarely did. It was steep on this side, a long flight of old, worn stone steps leading up the hill to a ruined fort, and she was shocked to find herself out of breath and clutching the iron hand-rail before she was half-way up. She had to rest, leaning on the railing and pretending she was admiring the view, though there was no one around to be concerned with what she was doing. Slowly, she continued up the steps until she reached the top, where across the grass in front of the ruin she could see a bench, facing the sun.

It was pleasant, sitting there. The bench was comfortable. Not
a wooden one but made of metal and curved at the back so that her body felt moulded to its shape. She closed her eyes, enjoying the sun, and thinking that she would walk on to the road and get a bus back to the town centre when she had had enough of sitting there. Then she felt the weight of someone lowering themselves onto the bench beside her, but she didn't open her eyes. There was a sigh, loud and deliberate, and then a burp, followed by ‘Pardon!' Still, she remained with her eyes closed, but aware suddenly of a smell, of beer, she thought. A tramp. She would have to move. She started to get up, but a restraining hand appeared on her arm. ‘Give me the time of day, love,' a voice said, and Rachel saw it was not a tramp, or not exactly a tramp, but a woman, holding a bottle of lager. She was wearing a battered-looking sheepskin coat, in spite of the warmth of the day, and had heavy-duty green wellingtons on her feet and a headscarf tied tightly under her chin. Uneasily, Rachel allowed herself to be detained, though once the woman's hand was removed she aimed to escape quickly. The hand stayed there. The woman took a swig from the bottle. ‘Nice day,' she said. ‘Nice to have a bit of sun, isn't it?' Rachel nodded. ‘I might not have many more of them,' the woman went on, and then ‘my days are numbered, see, my card's marked, that's the truth.' Rachel tried to detach the hand pulling at the sleeve of her jacket, saying, very politely, that she was afraid she would have to go, but she couldn't without its turning into a tug-of-war.