It was Sister Burstead’s day off, and a nurse whistled as she brought in the first supper tray.
Granny Barnacle commented in a hearty voice,
‘A whistling woman, a crowing hen,
Is neither fit for God nor man.’
The nurse stopped whistling and gave Granny Barnacle a close look, dumped the tray, and went to fetch another.
Granny Trotsky attempted to raise her head and say something.
‘Granny Trotsky wants something,’ said Granny Duncan.
‘What you want, Granny?’
‘She is saying,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘that we shouldn’t be unkind to the nurses just because —’
‘Unkind to the nurses! What they goin’ to do when the winter —’Miss Taylor prayed for grace. Is there no way, she thought, for them to forget the winter? Can’t they go back to making their wills every week?
In the course of the night Granny Trotsky died as the result of the bursting of a small blood-vessel in her brain, and her spirit returned to God who gave it.
FIVE
Mrs Anthony knew instinctively that Mrs Pettigrew was a kindly woman. Her instinct was wrong. But the first few weeks after Mrs Pettigrew came to the Colstons to look after Charmian she sat in the kitchen and told Mrs Anthony of her troubles.
‘Have a fag,’ said Mrs Anthony, indicating with her elbow the packet on the table while she poured strong tea. ‘Everything might be worse.
Mrs Pettigrew said, ‘It couldn’t very well be worse. Thirty years of my life I gave to Mrs Lisa Brooke. Everyone knew I was to get that money. Then this Guy Leet turns up to claim. It wasn’t any marriage, that wasn’t. Not a proper marriage.’ She pulled her cup of tea towards her and, thrusting her head close to Mrs Anthony’s, told her in what atrocious manner and for what long-ago reason Guy Leet had been incapable of consummating his marriage with Lisa Brooke.
Mrs Anthony swallowed a large sip of her tea, the cup of which she held in both hands, and breathed back into the cup while the warm-smelling steam spread comfortingly over her nose. ‘Still,’ she said, ‘a husband’s a husband. By law.’
‘Lisa never recognized him as such,’ said Mrs Pettigrew. ‘No one knew about the marriage with Guy Leet, until she died, the little swine’.
‘I thought you says she was all right,’ said Mrs Anthony.
‘Guy Leet,’ said Mrs Pettigrew. ‘He’s the little swine.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, the courts will have something to say to that, dear, when it comes up. Have a fag.’
‘You’re making me into a smoker, Mrs Anthony. Thanks, I will. But you should try to cut them down, they aren’t too good for you.
‘Twenty a day since I was twenty-five and seventy yesterday,’ said Mrs Anthony.
‘Seventy! Gracious, you’ll be —’
‘Seventy years of age yesterday.’
‘Oh, seventy. Isn’t it time you had a rest then? I don’t envy you with this lot,’ Mrs Pettigrew indicated with her head the kitchen door, meaning the Colstons residing beyond it.
‘Not so bad,’ said Mrs Anthony.
‘He’s tight with the money?’ said Mrs Pettigrew.
Mrs Anthony said, ‘Oh very,’ swivelling her eyes towards her companion to fix the remark.
Mrs Pettigrew patted her hair which was thick, dyed black and well cut, as Lisa had made her wear it. ‘How old,’ she said, ‘would you say I was, Mrs Anthony?’
Mrs Anthony, still sitting, pushed back in her chair the better to view Mrs Pettigrew. She looked at the woman’s feet in their suede black shoes, her tight good legs — no veins, her encased hips and good bust. Mrs Anthony then put her head sideways to regard, from an angle of fifteen degrees, Mrs Pettigrew’s face. There were lines from nose to mouth, a small cherry-painted mouth. Only the beginnings of one extra chin. Two lines across the brow. The eyes were dark and clear, the nose firm and broad. ‘I should say,’ said Mrs Anthony, folding her arms, ‘you was sixty-four abouts.’
The unexpectedness of Mrs Pettigrew’s gentle voice was due to her heavily-marked appearance. It was gentler still as she said to Mrs Anthony, ‘Add five years.’
‘Sixty-nine. You don’t look it,’ said Mrs Anthony. ‘Of course you ye had the time and money to look after yourself and powder your face. You should of been in business.’
In fact, Mrs Pettigrew was seventy-three, but she did not at all look the age under her make-up.
She drew her hand across her forehead, however, and shook her head slowly. She was worried about the money, the court case which would probably drag on and on. Lisa’s family were claiming their rights too.
Mrs Anthony had started washing up.
‘Old Warner still in with
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Pettigrew. ‘He is.’
‘It takes her off my hands for a while,’ said Mrs Anthony.
‘I must say,’ Mrs Pettigrew said, ‘when I was with Lisa Brooke I used to be asked in to meet the callers. I mixed with everyone. ‘Mrs Anthony started peeling potatoes and singing.
