Wait Till I Tell You (26 page)

I know I had some moments that must have meant something, that you might expect to have left something of themselves behind; I had a husband and a daughter, after all. Of him I recall his motorcycle sidecar and his hard collars for the office, his household accounting and his succumbing, moribund, to televised boxing, and later to golf. I never loved him as I loved the parquet floor, that made under my houseworking feet a rewarding bony sound of business and direction. But I should never have had that floor without him; perhaps my cool heart has been my salvation.

The daughter was a disappointment. It was fortunate I did not fall for her at once, as I saw other mothers fall for their new babies, or I might have been downcast when things fell out badly. I had the satisfaction of knowing I had tried with her; it was not I but she who failed. Still it is strange that I have no sweet memories of her; children are said to be sweet, after all, and she was once a child, though all I recall of it is the struggling, to get her out of me, and, once she was out, to keep her within the necessary boundaries. She has failed me in that too. She offers no sweet memories, even though she is dead.

It was like her to die, just when the children of our acquaintances were giving them grandchildren. She was too selfish for that. If any man would have had her, to marry that is, which I doubt. There was one she wanted, but we could not have him. My husband had not worked himself to the bone for that, to see his only descendant marry a nobody without prospects and more airs than common sense. He had paint on his twills when he visited, and he encouraged her to cut off her hair. I made her go back and have it made into a switch, naturally. I told her, ‘With your face you will find you need all the hair you can get.’ She had the features of a horse without the domestic skills. Her hair was her one attribute, and my God how we worked over it, my husband and I. He would skelp her with the brush if ever she mentioned getting it cut, and I would give it a hundred strokes at night with the same brush to keep it shiny from the roots to the bitter end. I had her stand up for this after the hair grew past her sit-upon.

She had dirty gypsy ways and vandalised the frocks I bought her. There was a mother-of-pearl gown, tight at the waist, with runs of buttons all down the forearm, and pixie detailing. She dyed it. Black, so it shimmered like curtains caught in a house-fire. I said to her, ‘What did you think you were doing?’ and she said, ‘Dyeing.’

She never fitted in with us and the reason is we were too soft. We were generous. I turned out her room for her every day till she died. She would never have had to work, unless she insisted on remaining unmarried. She was not feminine, that was the trouble. She had no idea of how to make the best of herself. It is doubtful that she ever asked herself what it was a man wanted, although I had told her enough times.

I could not have had the progeny of that whore in my house. She took it with her when she went, which was not as stupid as she usually contrived to be. She wasn’t far gone, but it would have showed soon and her father would have killed her. She took that off his hands and did the job herself. The boy moved away from here and is no doubt a big noise in the world of paint, up in London. A huge mouth he had, always laughing; he was polite in that way they are when they think they know more than you. His father, unlike my husband, had not made a tidy fortune with his own hands. You could tell that right away.

Of course she had messed it up, but with her gone we returned to the old life. I threw her pyjama-case monkey out, and the shelf of books. I changed the candlewick in her room to a fresh willow green on both the beds. I had told her she could have a friend to stay every year round her birthday, but she said, ‘No thank you.’ It was as though she didn’t think I’d make her precious friend welcome. Now we know
what
we know, perhaps it’s as well we didn’t have the birthday visitor. We were not good enough for our daughter, that was it. She wanted messy people, used to bounty, loiterers and loungers taking their blessings for granted. You could tell that boy came from money, he always wore the same old clothes.

No, she was not a feminine creature, my daughter. Her great feet and hands and the way she talked right the way around a thing as though she was eating it, these told against her, and the glasses she needed from the reading she insisted she enjoyed, just to make us feel inferior for having done real work. She had no friends round our home, everyone in the road saw the difficulties we had with her, and the way she took it out of us, smoking cigarettes in the street with no hat on and wearing outfits you would not be seen dead in. I sometimes wondered why we raked the gravel and swept up the leaves when she would be coming home from school to mess them up again. It was worse than a dog, but with none of the gratitude.

It doesn’t take genius to see the woman in the next bed has been without the advantages that have made my life what it is. She lies there with only the Complan in the beaker to look forward to. Her nightdresses are shocking, bright robes with no shape and ridiculous pictures on them of bears in space rockets, or dancing carrots in the arms of manly leeks. Her slippers are big furry cows’ faces, with a pink curly tongue poking out of the front of each one, and rolling eyes – the scared-soppy eyes of creatures in cartoons. Not feminine. No self-respect. She can’t wear the slippers, but she has them. Now, what is the point of that, to have something you do not need? All around her bed is clutter, most of it useless. There are chocolate bars in disorderly piles, and other confectionery including special-occasion boxes with large bows on them. There are always flowers, invariably in want of rearrangement. The magazines look no better than they ought, with ‘true love’ stories printed so large on the pages you could not help reading the words from here where I sit, even if you were not forced to listen while one of the interminable daughters or grandchildren reads to the old object in the bed. They turn her and stroke her and dust off the biscuit crumbs they have made on her as they shout and munch and giggle and coo around the bed. They talk to her all the time. It’s pointless, naturally. I could tell them that. They make a great operation of drawing the curtains round her bed – it’s a cot really – and changing her nightgown for another unsuitable creation. They hold her hands and kiss them, not on the back as foreign men do in the films, but on the knuckles, sometimes once for each knuckle. Well, it’s not my way. The overuse of kissing has not escaped my notice as a general trend. It has at least doubled, and that is among the merely acquainted.

What need has she in the next bed for privacy? She surely has no pride. She knows nothing of her present circumstances. All that old woman can have left to her is her memories, and a soft shapeless little bundle they must compose.

We’ve open visiting hours here. All day they are at it, the family of the dying old woman, as though they can introduce themselves to death when it comes and make it part of the family.

I shall be alone when we meet, up and dressed, like the bride of the century, than which I am younger by a year. I shall give back the parcel that I have to pass. It is not light at all. How ever I carried it I do not know. And I did so alone. I have never had that much use for other people.

Around the bed of the old woman who does not move sit the members of her family, in dark coats and with bare heads. Some of them have handkerchiefs that are white like letters. The narrow bed is heaped with boxes, wrapped in glowing paper tied with ribbons that seem to shimmer. Light is coming from them in this meanly lit room. There is a warmth like sunlight, not like fire. I cannot tell you where it comes from.

We have open visiting hours here and I see that I have a visitor. We have not met before, but I feel that I know him at once. So distinguished a person cannot have come for her before me. I am scented and ready. My back is straight. I have something to hand over to him.

With the excellent manners you might expect from him, I see that my visitor is stopping awhile by the bed next to mine. Let him come to me soon. The weight of this parcel is killing me.

Tact comes easily to him, that much is clear. He has seated himself discreetly among those who surround the bed and is taking the hands of the old woman in his. The four hands lie still, in a clasp as loose and strong as a heavy chain, among the heaped parcels, which seem, like the light thrown by coloured glass on pale stone, to be fading as the room grows darker. Can it be that the visitor has forgotten me?

‘We have open visiting hours here,’ I remind him. But he does not look up.

Here comes the tea woman with her heavy trolley. The large kettle on it is a two-hander, but even with two hands it is hard to control. She pours the tea into the mugs without stopping between each one, like a gardener watering well-rooted bulbs in pots from a watering can without a rose. The upper tray of the trolley is awash with tea. No one has thought to ask me whether in fact I do take milk, so I receive it.

Something appears to be bringing the old woman in the next bed to life.

The tea woman puts the mug of tea upon my table with care. It is considerate of her to avoid slopping it. She is very deaf. Too late, I see her putting sugar in my drink. I look up to remonstrate with her, but she is saying something.

‘Sweets for the sweet,’ she says.

Change of Use

In the pantry at the back of the long house, Mary shifted back a little on the edge of the stone sink, as she had done since these Thursday rituals began. She wanted to balance so she could drift off into her own thoughts without falling in or letting Mr Charteris know that she was not fully with him as he pushed away at her with his hands wringing one another on the rattling taps behind her back. She had given him green beans for lunch for a change, instead of peas with the Thursday shepherd’s pie. She could smell the blackberry and apple she was making for his dinner cooking away under its crumble in the low oven.

‘Tell me your name again, my dear,’ said Mr Charteris.

‘Dorothy,’ said Mary, to liven things up.

Overwhelmed by this unanticipated new companion, Mr Charteris shook sadly as though to rid himself of dust, buttoned, sighed, pushed Mary aside like a curtain and washed his hands under taps that quivered as the water promised to arrive, held off and then gushed out, hot and chalky, through the aged piping into the sink where tonight’s potatoes eyed him smugly from the colander.

He dried his hands while Mary set the kettle to boil. Upstairs the house slept, as it would for another twenty-five minutes.

He felt astonishingly well, astonishingly.

He smelt the tea as she spooned it from the red-and-gold caddy, saw her skin it seemed to him glow with the new life Thursdays must bring her, felt the sunshine as it came in slabs through the barred deep windows of the back of the house that looked on to lawn and shrubs and finally thicket, copse and wood. No one knew the house as he did. He had been a boy here and would die here. Each room held its story for him.

Mr Charteris sat down and rested his forearms on the kitchen table.

Mary brought him a tray of old silver, some cloths and the tin of polish.

‘The lid’s hard,’ said Mr Charteris. ‘Got stuck. When it dries this stuff’s like glue.’

‘I’m sure you can do it,’ said Mary, pouring water on to the tea leaves from the heavy kettle off the stove. She kicked herself for not having tested the lid of the polish tin. This part was as important for him as what had gone before. She was sure that these Thursdays didn’t take life from him but put it back. Maybe the care she was offering him was not orthodox, but it was natural.

‘There. Done it. Nothing like experience,’ said Mr Charteris.

She hoped he wouldn’t look too closely at the silver on the tray. Not much of it matched and not all of it was silver. She’d brought some deliberately for him from other places she worked at.

‘This tea’s just the thing,’ said Mr Charteris. ‘Polishing dries out the tubes.’

She looked over at him from the lower oven where she was testing the crumble with a spoon. Her overall was getting tight. She shut the heavy door and bathed in the heat of butter and sugar burning together. It all made her hungry, she couldn’t help it. She was hungry all the time now.

‘Yes, and that is thirsty work too,’ said Mr Charteris, supposing he should now pat Mary’s bottom to go with the words, but not bothering to get up and go over to her actually to do this, because now came the reliable pleasure of his afternoon, the creaming and dipping and rubbing and the revelation of the silver. The distinction between his younger days and these later years was this for him: then he had been blind to the beauty of habit; now it was a luxury, a conscious indulgence as irresistible as yawning, stretching, surrendering to sleep.

Habit had become his bride, his chosen ravishment, his companion elect. It was simply that his wish to share his habit with just one other person at a time was not encouraged by the new masters here.

Mary was wondering how to keep the room empty for long enough to let Mr Charteris be through with his polishing. She relied upon the herd instinct, the set of rules that kept the rest of the residents of the house hung about their routine like a beard of bees.

He was holding up each knife to the light, checking each fork for speckles of erosion, the bruise of tarnish. To the left of the tray on the silver cloth he set the cleaned utensils, to the right lay the unpolished. The whole collection shone about as much as a dish of sardines and vinegar on toast. Still it made him so glad that she guessed he saw a shine not visible to her.