“I wonder what the vicar would have to say.”
“About what?” Sylvia asked, trundling in with the laundry basket. She stared at him. “Drinking?”
“Yes. Why not? Would you like to join me?”
“Why are you saying that?” She stopped dead, eyeing him. “As if we were in a TV play. As if I were some other woman.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I only asked—”
“There must be at least three hundred calories in that. Is it Slimline Tonic or not?”
“It’s flat anyway,” Colin said. Its momentary sparkle had subsided by the time he emptied it into his glass. “I can make up for it if I go carefully over the weekend.”
“Very likely; when Florence comes round with shortbread on Sunday afternoon and gets into a state if you don’t eat it.”
“Well, perhaps I could just have one piece, and hope she’ll take it in good part. Would you pass me a knife for my lemon, please? Besides, you know, if you want the honest truth—”
“If I want the honest truth, I suppose I’ll go begging.”
“Sylvia, what is this?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m not really interested in losing any more weight.”
“You’ll regret it,” she sang. She moved across the kitchen towards him, trying to lighten her tone.
“Mum,” said Claire, “you shouldn’t carry a knife with the pointy side like that, it’s dangerous.”
“It’s called a blade, Claire,” Sylvia said calmly. “You’ll regret it when you go off to the squash club, and collapse and die.”
“You’re not allowed to die at my squash club,” Colin said. He took the knife and stuck it in his lemon. “It’s like the Palace of Westminster, no one is allowed to expire within the precincts. They’d run you outside and leave you on the pavement.”
“It’s hardly a thing to joke about, in front of Claire.”
“Claire might laugh.” Colin stood with the slice of lemon poised on the blade of his knife. “I know you won’t. Humour’s not your strong point, is it?”
“When did you start hating me?” Sylvia asked. “I’d like to know. Can you remember what year it was? When did you start hating me, and when, if ever, did you stop?”
Colin turned away, letting his slice of lemon fall on the counter top. He could not imagine what had prompted this. The photograph of his former mistress lay snugly under his wife’s pelvic bone, the bleak little face staring at the lining of her pocket. A bluebottle alighted on his glass and walked slowly and purposefully round the rim.
The hospital where Mrs. Wilmot worked was named not for St. Luke, the physician, but for the tax collector, St. Matthew. Its main building, within the memory of many of its patients—memories most acute for their early lives— had been the union workhouse. It still looked like a workhouse, grey and draughty, with its high ceilings and stained walls. In the part of the building which was now taken over by offices, you could still see the old wooden benches, built with a ridge in their backs so that the paupers would not lounge about and get too comfortable. Its general air was so depressing, its inmates so futureless, and its corridors so drab that even though the area unemployment rate was 16 per cent, the hospital could not keep its staff. They could not live, they found, with the prospect of what was in store for them.
The wards here did not have interesting names, just letters. The best patients were in C Ward; the worst were in A. Perhaps this psychological ploy was meant for the staff, for the patients were beyond encouragement.
The Staff Nurse called out to Poor Mrs. Wilmot as she trailed in: “Hello there, love. Would you mind mopping up after Mrs. Anderson? She’s had an accident.”
“Course, I don’t have to.” She took her coat off and laid it over a chair. “Course, I’m entitled to a nurse to do that. Course, I don’t mind.”
“Oh, you are a brick, Mrs. Wilmot,” Staff said. “I don’t know where we’d be without you.”
The ward smelled; not of its incontinent patients, but of what was almost worse, disinfectant, air freshener, talcum powder, drug-induced sleep. And now of food; the dinner trolley rolled in, purees and mashes under their metal covers.
Staff took up a bowl, and perched on the edge of a bed.
“Try this potato, love,” she urged, forking it appetisingly.
Her patient rolled her head away and puckered her mouth. Mrs. Anderson lay huddled in the next bed, no movement except for her breathing, in out, in out. Why did she bother, Staff wondered. She never spoke or moved. Neither did Mrs. Sidney, in the bed beyond; nothing at all, except from time to time a peevish flicker of her sunken eyes. The ladies of A Ward were so old, so sick, so far away; they clung to the very fringes of human existence, to the outer edge of whatever could be taken for sentient and separate life. Their shrunken bodies hardly disturbed the sheets, their tiny skulls on the pillows were no bigger than grapefruits. Yet Mrs. Sidney was not so old, really; one in twenty people over sixty-five suffered from senile dementia, and she had been lying in this bed when she should have been a spry old pensioner going off to the shops with a bus pass and a basket on wheels. She’d been on A Ward (Female) for eight years; Staff had been on it for eight weeks. She didn’t know how much longer she’d last. Even C Ward was better, where sixty old ladies sat round the day room, fastened into their highchairs, and chattered at each other, occasionally wept, and sometimes threw things. The A Wards, conveniently, were closer to the mortuary; few left by any other route. But I’ll leave, Staff thought; I’ll get myself to a coronary care unit, where I’ll meet a stressed executive: and soon I’ll be a bride. She dreamed of it, when she dozed on night duty; instead of a train she wore a stiff white sheet, with the monogram of the Area Health Authority in red on a tape by the hem.
“Don’t feed Mrs. Sidney,” she said, looking up. “I want to keep her tidy. She’s expecting visitors tonight.”
