Is There Anything You Want? (19 page)

Sitting down and forcing herself to summon up the required energy to write the short letter, Chrissie suddenly wondered what her mother had meant by that ‘whatever else'.

*

It was true, she had said that if there was anything Chrissie wanted, just to let her know. Holding the letter in her hand, Mrs Hibbert remembered writing this, and meaning it. Meaning it, but not expecting a response of this sort. She remembered, too, that other occasion, five years ago (or was it four?) when she had said the same thing in person to the girl, at her mother's funeral. She had looked so forlorn, so utterly pathetic, her thin face so pale, her great brown eyes swamped in tears which somehow never quite spilled over, just remained there, lakes of sorrow. Mrs Hibbert had been shocked at the evidence of such raw grief, she had been unprepared to discover that a 25-year-old woman, and a doctor too, could be so overwhelmed by the death of her mother. It must mean, she had concluded, that Chrissie and Sandra had been very close indeed. She hadn't known this, but then she hardly knew Sandra – four times they'd met, while Francis was alive – and could not claim to know Chrissie in the slightest. She'd been surprised to be invited to the funeral and had only gone out of loyalty to Francis. And when she'd offered to help, Chrissie had touched her briefly on her arm, a little pat of gratitude (or so she'd judged it), and tried to smile.

What she wanted at this moment was a calming cup of tea,
because Chrissie's letter had made her agitated, there was no denying this. The tea made, Mrs Hibbert wished for the hundredth time that she had someone with whom she could discuss what she should do. It was the worst part of being on her own. She'd never got used to it. Friends were no substitute for Francis, to whom she had been able to confess her meanest thoughts, knowing he would understand. Telling friends things she would later regret was fatal to friendship, whereas telling Francis had no repercussions. He'd listened and sorted her out and never made her feel ashamed. She knew that what she would have been saying to him now was that, although
of course
she had meant what she had written to Chrissie, she had never envisaged being put to this kind of test. She would have asked Francis why on earth the girl had asked her, of all people, a virtual stranger, to come and stay with her. He would surely have agreed that it was peculiar and that Chrissie must be desperate to suggest it.

In the silence of her tidy kitchen, Mrs Hibbert could clearly hear in her head that Francis was saying ‘Exactly'. He was saying something else too. You must go to her at once, he was telling her, his voice very firm. ‘Oh,
really
!' Mrs Hibbert said aloud, and got up, scraping the legs of her chair on the floor in the way she hated others doing, and washing her mug noisily at the sink using an unnecessarily large amount of water. She felt rebellious. Liberties were being taken, surely. She wasn't a nurse, Chrissie must know enough real nurses who would oblige. ‘I am not well at the moment,' she had written, ‘and feel in need of someone to help, just for a little while, and I wondered, after your kind note, whether there was any chance of your coming to stay?' It was polite enough, but why didn't the girl say what was wrong with her? Mrs Hibbert suddenly wondered if Chrissie's ailment was of the nervous kind, a breakdown, if long delayed, after the inquest of that young woman. It would explain why she hadn't specified what she was suffering from.

She had to make up her mind how to respond. There were several convincing excuses which immediately presented themselves, but she knew she would not use them. It would be despicable. Hadn't she said ‘If there is anything you want'? And hadn't
she now been told it was her presence that was wanted? The alarm and anxiety she experienced as she faced up to this was mixed with a weird feeling of something like excitement – she had been chosen, sent for, she would be answering what could only be described as an emergency call. Francis would have been proud of her. And in fact she could not help feeling quite proud herself as she wrote to Chrissie, saying how sorry she was to hear that she was not well, and telling her she would come at once, the very next day (that is, the day after her letter arrived – she made that clear). She could have telephoned, but as Chrissie had written, she thought she should reply in kind.

It worried her that she knew nothing about Chrissie's house, never having visited her. Would it be cold? Sandra's house had been horribly cold. The only time she and Francis had stayed there, she'd been so cold she'd had to get up in the middle of the night and put a cardigan on. She decided to pack her warmest clothes even though it was still summer, just in case. It was enjoyable to get her suitcase out again and begin selecting items to put in it – she'd always liked this part of going away, the pleasures of preparing. Years since she'd indulged it. She'd lost the habit of holidays. Once, she'd been quite adventurous, valuing her own independent spirit, never minding that she had no one to accompany her. She'd toured Scotland and then Ireland after Francis died, perfectly comfortable to stay in bed-and-breakfast places. The driving had given her great satisfaction, and she'd been a skilled navigator, expert at reading maps. But then the urge to travel had mysteriously left her. She preferred to stay at home, where she was comfortable. The last holiday she'd taken, seven years ago, had been to Cornwall, and every bed she'd slept in had seemed either too hard or too soft and she'd ended up with a sore back.

But, she reminded herself, she was not going on holiday. She was going to stay with a young woman she hardly knew who was unwell in some unspecified way and needed help. She would very likely be going to spend her time indoors doing a lot of listening and looking after. It would be like her role as a Friend, and yet unlike it. Chrissie was a doctor, a professional woman, who would not want advice or guidance in the same way as
patients coming in a state of confusion to the hospital. And she was not like Dot, craving direction, or even Emma, looking for a substitute mother. The more she tried to decide what exactly Chrissie would want of her, the more Mrs Hibbert was overcome with the awkwardness of the situation. At least she wasn't going far – the drive to Chrissie's house was not much longer than her weekly drive to St Mary's. She would be there in under an hour.

Chrissie's house was a new one, on the other side of the river from St Mary's. Mrs Hibbert knew the area because she frequently drove that way on her visits to a garden centre specialising in azaleas. She'd seen these houses being built, a row of them, screened from the road by conifers. They were advertised as town houses, though they were a mile at least out of the town, and looked odd to her, standing where they did, a terrace more suited to a street than the bank of a river. She expected them to be poky inside, though their external appearance was attractive enough. The narrow balconies, she'd noticed, had pretty wrought-iron railings and in summer there were window boxes on them full of petunias and geraniums. The front doors were painted black and had brass knockers and letter-boxes (hell to clean, she'd reflected). All this she'd glimpsed as she'd driven to and from the garden centre. It rather pleased her to think of going inside one of them and she looked forward to comparing Chrissie's accommodation with her own. She'd often thought that she herself should perhaps move to some smaller dwelling, easier to look after, in preparation for her old age, but the prospect of giving up her garden had squashed that idea.

Pulling up outside Chrissie's house, Mrs Hibbert reflected that this was a good place for a single woman to live. There were neighbours either side – Chrissie's house was in the middle of the twelve houses – and though it was a quiet spot the road was near. There was space for her to park without any trouble, which was a relief (parking was not her strong point these days). She got out of the car, locked it after removing her suitcase, and began to walk up the short, paved path to the front door. As she did so, a movement at one of the first-floor windows caught her eye. The windows were covered by white Venetian blinds – several houses had them – and she had seen the slats in the
middle widen, as though someone was peering through. Convinced that Chrissie had seen her arrive and would be coming to open the door, Mrs Hibbert did not at first ring the bell, but then, when the door didn't open, and she could hear no movement inside, she pressed it lightly. Silence. She shifted uncomfortably on the step – really, one felt like a travelling salesman, standing like this with a suitcase on a doorstep – and rang the bell again, harder. She was just becoming exasperated, and ready to march back to her car, when she heard sounds of footsteps inside and at last the door began to inch open, but so slowly the effect was creepy. Mrs Hibbert coughed nervously, and said, ‘Chrissie? It's me, Aunt Mary, dear.' The door opened a little wider, pulled back by the fingers of a delicate white hand. Mrs Hibbert stepped inside, leaving her suitcase for the moment, and repeated, ‘Chrissie?' Behind the door she saw a young woman in a white nightdress whom she knew to be Chrissie, but who bore little resemblance to the person she had last seen some weeks ago in St Mary's. She seemed to be trembling, her hair was unbrushed, and her complexion was putty-coloured. ‘Dear me, Chrissie,' Mrs Hibbert said, and Chrissie began to weep.

*

Two days later, Mrs Hibbert was in control. Chrissie had been put to bed with a hot drink, and there she was going to stay until this supposed ‘fever' had passed. She hadn't tried to argue with the girl, who had diagnosed herself as having a fever, but frankly she didn't believe it. If this was a fever, it was of the mind, not the body, but Chrissie was the doctor and so it was best to accept her word. But the young woman was happy enough to stay in her bed and be brought tea and toast the first day then soup the next day. She sat up nicely and let her hands and face be washed and obediently lay down again when the tray was taken away after she'd drunk the soup. She said thank you all the time, and tried to smile. It seemed a relief to her to be cossetted and it was a relief to Mrs Hibbert to do the cossetting.

But at night, she worried. The bed she was in was perfectly
comfortable and the room pleasant if smaller than she was used to, but she could not sleep. Chrissie was like a little girl, polite and obedient, pathetic in her eager dependency, and it made Mrs Hibbert uneasy for reasons which had very little to do with Chrissie herself. It was the echoes which bothered her, echoes at first of her own past – her mother looking after her and the bliss of it all, of her brow being soothed and her cheek kissed, and the way her mother tiptoed out of her room and her voice shushing her brothers on the stairs, a voice heavy with concern. Where did it go, that concern? Mrs Hibbert strained to remember. It seemed to have evaporated when she went to boarding-school. That first holiday, back from school for Christmas, she had had flu and her mother seemed annoyed more than anything: it was suddenly a trouble for her to bring hot drinks and feel the invalid's forehead. There was none of that anxious tenderness for her welfare which used to be such a comfort. It was all to do with growing up, she'd supposed, a natural process of separation, and she had tried to be brave about it. Once, her mother had seemed to recognise this new distance between them, she'd said, ‘What an affectionate child you used to be, Mari!' as though it was her daughter and not herself who had spoiled their intimacy. Then there was another kind of echo. Inevitably, she was reminded of Francis that last week, when she had mistaken . . . She forced the memory away. This would not do.

She concentrated instead on thinking about Chrissie, wondering if she had ever had a boyfriend. (Actually, she meant a lover, but that was how she put it in her mind, a boyfriend, feeling deeper speculation would be prurient.) Surely she had. She was pretty and pleasant, even if she made nothing of herself and spoiled her looks by her untidiness of dress. She wanted to ask the girl about friends but could not quite find tactful words. Certainly, there were few phone calls about Chrissie's state of health. Mrs Hibbert had been in residence three days, and the phone had rung only once, and that had been Mr Wallis's secretary saying he thought she should take a much longer break once her flu had gone, have a real holiday. Mrs Hibbert hadn't known that Chrissie's ailment was flu, but she went along with this and said she thought the invalid's temperature was down and she
was feeling a bit better. This was true, Chrissie did seem better, whatever had been wrong with her, and on the fourth day she got up and dressed and came downstairs. Instantly, things were much more awkward. Dealing with Chrissie when she was a wreck was one thing, dealing with her when she had recovered was another. It was her house, after all. Suddenly, Mrs Hibbert was not in control. She was a guest, and she was not good at being a guest. She didn't like how Chrissie did things but it would have been impolite to complain about her never making tea properly (tea should be made in a teapot, not by merely dunking a tea-bag in a mug of not-even-properly-boiling water) or leaving bread in the toaster at too high a setting so that it burned. The kitchen quickly became an area of confrontation over trifles, and Mrs Hibbert wanted, to get away from it.

‘Chrissie,' she said, on the morning of the fourth day, after an uncomfortable hour during which they said nothing to each other, ‘Chrissie, I think I'll go home now that you're better.' The response had been entirely unexpected and alarming. ‘No!' Chrissie had almost shouted. ‘No, please, Aunt Mary, not yet.' ‘But I'm doing no good,' said Mrs Hibbert. ‘I'm just in the way now you're up and about.' ‘You're company,' Chrissie said, ‘I want company, please, for a little while longer. I can't explain . . . I . . . I know I'm being feeble, but . . . with everything that's happened.' ‘Well,' Mrs Hibbert said, ‘I'll stay until the weekend, then, but on Thursday I must go to the hospital for the afternoon. I'm on duty, I can't let the Friends down. Will you be all right on your own for a few hours?' Chrissie nodded. ‘And I can't go on doing nothing here,' Mrs Hibbert went on. ‘I can't sit around like yesterday. You must let me give the place a good clean and do something about the garden. You can help me, sitting around does no one any good, you should know that.'