‘Come on,’ Julia said. ‘Let’s have your coat, my love.’ She leant over Sue and began to undo her buttons. I thought, she’s changed; it must be part of her training.
Sue did not move: only looked at her dully. ‘Let me help you,’ Julia said patiently. She took hold of Sue and levered her into a sitting position, then began to ease the coat from her shoulders.
Sue cooperated, slow and baffled, drawing out her arms inch by inch. Julia was thwarted by her clenched fists; Sue nodded blearily towards them, left then right, as if she’d seen them somewhere before. Julia eased open her hands, finger by finger, and drew the cuffs over them. Sue’s eyes were closed. Julia lifted her by her elbows and in the half-second she was vertical swept the coat from under her. She tossed it on to Claire’s bed. I glanced at Claire. Her face was full of pain. ‘Will she be all right?’ I said. I was frightened.
‘Of course,’ Julia said shortly. ‘They wouldn’t have discharged her if she wasn’t going to be all right.’
Professional solidarity, I thought. Sue flopped back on the bed. ‘You’ll be more comfortable if you lie down the right way up, Sue.’ She grasped Sue by the ankles and gently up-ended her, to induce her to follow this advice. Then she began to take off her shoes. They were brown lace-up shoes, like school shoes. The laces were very badly knotted. Julia picked at them. Her occupation made her look humble, like someone in the New Testament.
Sue mouthed something. ‘I think she says just pull,’ Claire said.
Julia pulled. The stockinged heels jerked out. ‘Oh, I see, you never untie them,’ Julia said. I thought I heard the voice of Mother Benedict, talking on her frequent topic of shoe-abuse: ‘a sluttish habit, and sure ruination to the shape of the leather’.
Julia slotted a hand under Sue’s head. She jerked it up and flapped a pillow under it. Sue’s head fell back as if half-severed. Her pale hair was dark with sweat. Her skull seemed to have taken on bony contours that I had not seen before. She is quite ugly, I thought: ashamed of myself for thinking it. However did we persuade ourselves that she didn’t look pregnant? That was wishful thinking, wasn’t it? I could see now, as she lay breathing through her mouth, a scooped hollow beneath her ribs.
‘Unpack her case,’ Julia said. Claire moved to obey. She brought out a scruffy washbag, blue sprigs of flowers on dusty pink: a packet of aspirin, and a huge rubbery pack of heavy-duty sanitary towels. She stood with them in her hand, turning her head slowly, her expression unreadable. ‘Well, what do you expect her to do?’ Julia said. ‘Stick a Tampax up?’ She straightened up from the bed. Her cheeks were pink, with the effort of wrestling with the shoes and in shock at her own crudity. ‘Put them where she can find them, Claire.’
I looked down at Sue on the bed. ‘She’s as white as a sheet,’ I said. I was struck that a simile could come true.
‘I know it looks dramatic.’ Julia was breathing heavily. ‘But twenty-four hours from now she’ll be fine, honestly. Claire, are you going to be around tonight? See she gets plenty of fluid. She might throw up. Get a bowl or something. Can you do that? Only myself, I’m going out.’
‘Of course, Julia,’ Claire said. ‘Just tell me what to do.’ Her mind was relieved; she was ready to be commanded, ready to fuss.
‘I just did,’ Julia said.
I thought, they do not teach this to first-year medical students. She is not some bedside nurse; she is busy making A Promising Start in Anatomy. She knows bones, not flesh: not flinching feet, jelly legs, dry mouth. As she passed me, speeding to the door, my hand brushed her arm. She gave me a half-glance and a half-smile. Her eyes seemed more deeply blue than ever before, as if someone had punched the blueness into them. Her fringe bounced fatly against her forehead. I remembered that she, too, had sometimes been away for the weekend. And that once she had brought back no news and no cakes: nothing back but herself.
A cold beading of sweat broke out on my forehead: it was another cliche forced into life. We should not be so careless with these images, phrases; they enact themselves. I followed Julia into the corridor, but she had already slammed into C3, and I didn’t want to be alone with her, in case I had to ask questions and she had to supply answers.
Claire followed me out. She held the door ajar, speaking in a bedside undertone, as if Sue were unaware of her own situation. And if she bleeds too much? How much is too much? It’s her body, I said, she’ll know. But if and if? Call a doctor. I couldn’t, she said, what about the warden, Jacqueline on the desk . . . Then come for me, I said tiredly, I will do it. I felt past caring, to be honest. I could always employ dumb insolence. I just didn’t want anybody to die.
The following day, Sue was up and about: uncertain, looking drained and ill, but no worse than people do look in the course of a London winter. There was an unspoken agreement that we would never again refer to what had taken place. Her child must vanish into the blank badlands of never-was: very different, of course, from the glittering realm of might-have-been.
That evening Lynette came to our room with a bottle of whisky. ‘Not one of my more elegant offerings,’ she said. ‘But now the crisis is over, I think we all need a proper drink.’
Julia slapped her book shut, and so did I. Claire was with us; she had brought her evening’s work in, because Sue had been ready for bed and wanted the lights out by eight o’clock. When Claire saw the bottle she excused herself, and said she would go downstairs and sit in the room off the hall that was called the Quiet Room; quiet was what she needed, she said. ‘Oh, Claire, come on, loosen up, have a drink . . .’ we said; but our pleas tailed off, we weren’t convincing. She went, we breathed a sigh, we smiled.
We brought our tooth-glasses; but Lynette had a cut-glass tumbler in her hand, heavy-based and glinting. Julia leant forward and flicked her nail against its rim. A thin melodious note shivered in the air. Julia and I both tried out our tumblers; there was nothing but a dull clink. ‘So,’ Julia said, ‘you are a serious spirits drinker. I knew your vices could not remain hidden for ever.’
Lynette’s blackberry eyes sharpened. ‘I wouldn’t have said they were hidden at all.’
‘What do you do for sex?’ Julia asked.
‘Oh, I get it in Harrow,’ Lynette said. ‘We go on, you know, pretty much as the rest of the world, but I do have a person back there, and I really don’t want to get him mixed up in all this.’
All this: the atmosphere of bath water and parsnips, talc and blood. Some hideous girls used to shave their legs and leave the hairs in the bath. Is it surprising that Tonbridge Hall saw the death of love?
The three of us grew cynical, and perhaps a little drunk. ‘The question is, who’s next?’ Lynette said. ‘Would you like to place a bet on my room-mate?’
For a moment the two of us spluttered out our whisky down our noses. Julia said, ‘Lynette, I know she’s put on weight, but you must understand that she’s naturally gross. I mean, imagine, who would look twice – she doesn’t
