on her large left cheek was pronounced. He thought in how much better form he himself was than his sister, though she was the younger, only seventy-nine.
Mrs Anthony looked round the door. ‘Someone on the phone for Dame Lettie.’
‘Oh, who is it?’
‘Wouldn’t give a name. ‘Ask who it is, please.’ ‘Did ask. Wouldn’t give —’’I’ll go,’ said Godfrey.
Dame Lettie followed him to the telephone and overheard the male voice. ‘Tell Dame Lettie,’ it said, ‘to remember she must die.’
‘Who’s there?’ said Godfrey. But the man had hung up.
‘We must have been followed,’ said Lettie. ‘I told no one I was coming over here last night.’
She telephoned to report the occurrence to the Assistant Inspector. He said, ‘Sure you didn’t mention to anyone that you intended to stay at your brother’s home?’
‘Of course I’m sure.
‘Your brother actually heard the voice? Heard it himself?’
‘Yes, as I say, he took the call.’
She told Godfrey, ‘I’m glad you took the call. It corroborates my story. I have just realized that the police have been doubting it.’
‘Doubting your word?’
‘Well, I suppose they thought I might have imagined it. Now, perhaps, they will be more active.’
Charmian said, ‘The police … what are you saying about the police? Have we been robbed?’
‘I am being molested,’ said Dame Lettie. Mrs Anthony came in to clear the table. ‘Ah, Taylor, how old are you?’ said Charmian. ‘Sixty-nine, Mrs Colston,’ said Mrs Anthony. ‘When will you be seventy?’ ‘Twenty-eighth November.’
‘That will be splendid, Taylor. You will then be one of us,’ said Charmian.
TWO
There were twelve occupants of the Maud Long Medical Ward (aged people, female). The ward sister called them the Baker’s Dozen, not knowing that this is thirteen, but having only heard the phrase; and thus it is that a good many old sayings lose their force.
First came a Mrs Emmeline Roberts, seventy-six, who had been a cashier at the Odeon in the days when it was the Odeon. Next came Miss or Mrs Lydia Reewes-Duncan, seventy-eight, whose past career was uncertain, but who was visited fortnightly by a middle-aged niece, very bossy towards the doctors and staff, very uppish. After that came Miss Jean Taylor, eighty-two, who had been a companion-maid to the famous authoress Charmian Piper after her marriage into the Colston Brewery family. Next again lay Miss Jessie Barnacle who had no birth certificate but was put down as eighty-one, and who for forty-eight years had been a newsvendor at Holborn Circus. There was also a Madame Trotsky, a Mrs Fanny Green, a Miss Doreen Valvona, and five others, all of known and various careers, and of ages ranging from seventy to ninety-three. These twelve old women were known variously as Granny Roberts, Granny Duncan, Granny Taylor, Grannies Barnacle, Trotsky, Green, Valvona, and so on.
Sometimes, on first being received into her bed, the patient would be shocked and feel rather let down by being called Granny. Miss or Mrs Reewes-Duncan threatened for a whole week to report anyone who called her Granny Duncan. She threatened to cut them out of her will and to write to her M.P. The nurses provided writing-paper and a pencil at her urgent request. However, she changed her mind about informing her M.P. when they promised not to call her Granny any more. ‘But,’ she said, ‘you shall never go back into my will.’
‘In the name of God that’s real awful of you,’ said the ward sister as she bustled about. ‘I thought you was going to leave us all a packet.’
‘Not now,’ said Granny Duncan. ‘Not now, I won’t. You don’t catch me for a fool.’
Tough Granny Barnacle, she who had sold the evening paper for forty-eight years at Holborn Circus, and who always said, ‘Actions speak louder than words’, would send out to Woolworth’s for a will-form about once a week; this would occupy her for two or three days.
She would ask the nurse how to spell words like ‘hundred’ and ‘ermine’.
‘Goin’ to leave me a hundred quid, Granny?’ said the nurse. ‘Goin’ to leave me your ermine cape?’
The doctor on his rounds would say, ‘Well, Granny Barnacle, am I to be remembered or not?’
‘You’re down for a thousand, Doc.’
‘My word, I must stick in with you, Granny. I’ll bet you’ve got a long stocking, my girl.’
Miss Jean Taylor mused upon her condition and upon old age in general. Why do some people lose their memories, some their hearing? Why do some talk of their youth and others of their wills? She thought of Dame Lettie Colston who had all her senses intact, and yet played a real will-game, attempting to keep the two nephews in suspense, enemies of each other. And Charmian … Poor Charmian, since her stroke. How muddled she was about most things, and yet perfectly sensible when she discussed the books she had written. Quite clear on just that one thing, the subject of her books.
A year ago, when Miss Taylor had been admitted to the ward, she had suffered misery when addressed as Granny Taylor, and she thought she would rather die in a ditch than be kept alive under such conditions. But she was a woman practised in restraint; she never displayed her resentment. The lacerating familiarity of the nurses’ treatment merged in with her arthritis, and she bore them both as long as she could without complaint. Then she was forced to cry out with pain during a long haunted night when the dim ward lamp made the beds into grey-white lumps like terrible bundles of laundry which muttered and snored occasionally. A nurse brought her an injection.
‘You’ll be better now, Granny Taylor.’
‘Thank you, nurse.
‘Turn over, Granny, that’s a good girl.’
