Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered
Annie rested, and slept as much as she could, welcoming unconsciousness except for the fearful dreams that still came. She dutifully ate all the food that was presented to her, and her face lost the sharp angles of sickness. She submitted to tests and exercises and the routines that were imposed on her, and she was rewarded with returning strength. Her family and friends came to visit her, and every evening Martin sat beside her bed and told her the day’s news. She tried hard to feel the intimacy of home in the hour of evening visiting, with the over-familiar flowered curtains enclosing them.
She felt closest to Steve, aware of him near to her when they didn’t meet, keeping her manner deliberately neutral when they did. It was hard, and she knew that they both felt the falsity of it.
When they met in the day room they talked about the books they were reading, the progress they had made, the day’s newspapers, but the artificial distance that Annie had imposed made no difference. Sometimes she thought that the casual talk did no more than emphasize another, silent dialogue.
One morning Annie was sitting reading in the chair beside her bed. At the ward sister’s suggestion Martin had brought some of Annie’s clothes in for her, and she had dressed herself in a skirt and jumper. The clothes felt thick and strange, and dowdy with her feet in slippers.
It wasn’t visiting time, and Annie was startled to look up and see her mother making her way slowly towards her bed. She relied on a stick now, and her knuckles stood out sharp and knobby as she grasped it. Annie stood up and went to her mother, putting her arm around her shoulders.
Anxiety made her demand, ‘What is it? Is something wrong?’
‘Nothing at all,’ she answered. ‘Your father dropped me off on his way somewhere. The ward sister kindly let me in. Here I am.’
Her mother was proud of herself, Annie saw. The little solo journey from the hospital doors to the ward was a triumph. The mother and daughter smiled at each other, and a little hopeful flame flickered between them. Perhaps, after all, she was getting better. Annie hugged her.
‘Thank you for coming. Sit down in this chair, Tibby.’
Annie’s mother’s real name was Alicia, but from childhood she had been called Tibby. Thomas and Benjy used the name now.
‘It sounds better than Granny. Sort of furry,’ Thomas said.
‘Like a cat, of course,’ Tibby had agreed. She was close to the two little boys, and it was an added sorrow for her that they tired her too much now to spend more than a few minutes with them. Before her illness Tibby had taken them on day-long expeditions, planning them in advance with Thomas and packing careful provisions in their picnic boxes.
‘It was clever of you to get them to let you in,’ Annie said. ‘They’re quite strict about it.’
Tibby was tired, and she sat down gratefully. ‘Couldn’t really turn me away, could they? Once I’d landed myself, stick and all. I wanted to see you. They’re asking me to go into some place, for a rest, that’s what they call it.’
The flame of hope went out, at once, and Annie saw the darkness. She felt cold, and pointlessly angry.
‘When? Why didn’t either of you say anything?’
‘Nothing to tell, darling. Jim agreed with me. Just a rest.’
‘Of course,’ Annie said numbly. ‘It will do you good.’
Of course. Tibby was sixty-five, but she looked older. Her hair was thin, and her arms and legs seemed fragile enough to snap under her tiny weight. Annie wondered, How long? Her mother’s pleasure in having reached the ward by herself stood out in a different, colder light.
Tibby was leaning back in the chair, looking at her daughter.
‘I’m glad to see you in your clothes. What about your hair?’
She was striving for the painful brightness that she had adopted for her other visits. Annie had weakly accepted it then, but she was well enough now to look beyond Tibby’s determined smile. She felt almost too heavy-hearted to answer, but at last she said, ‘I’ll have it cut when I get home. It won’t be long now, they’ve promised me.’ She was thinking that she would be going home almost well again, her own strength confirmed in her. But Tibby wasn’t going to get better. Annie remembered that she and Steve had talked about it as they held hands and looked up into the blackness. She had wondered if her mother felt the same anger, confronted by death, the same sense of regret for everything left undone. No, Steve had said. Your mother has seen you grow up. Seen her grandchildren.
She sat down beside Tibby and took her thin hand between hers. Annie was filled with a longing to be close to her, and to make the most of the time that was left to them.
‘Tibby, what do they say? The doctors. Tell me honestly.’
‘That you’re doing fine.’ Tibby’s smile was transparent.
‘You know that I didn’t mean me. What is this rest? How long is it for?’
Suddenly Annie heard in her own voice the same demanding, indignant note that was familiar from Thomas and Benjy. You’re my mother. You can’t leave me. I need you, and you belong here, with me.
More dues, Annie thought.
Tibby shrugged and said gently, ‘Well, darling. You know this disease. It doesn’t go away. They can’t predict what course it will take. They do what they can, and they tell me what they do know, because I ask them to. One doesn’t want to be deceived about the last thing of all, does one? A rest will help, they say. And it makes a break for your father, too.’
‘I should be helping,’ Annie said dismally.
Tibby surprised her with her laughter. ‘What could you do?’
‘Help Pop out in the house, or something.’
‘Darling, are you offering to come and clear up in my house?’
Annie laughed then too. In her mind’s eye she saw the polished, formal neatness of her mother’s rooms in contrast with the rag-bag of family possessions that filled her own. Annie’s indifference to domestic order hadn’t always been a joke between them.
‘I’m sure the house looks immaculate.’
Tibby nodded, her smile fading a little. ‘It does. And will, as long as I have anything to do with it.’
Annie wondered, without speaking, how long that would be. She couldn’t imagine even now how Tibby could polish the parquet tiles and scour the big old sinks. She had thought with Steve how sad it was that her mother’s life had been dedicated to a house. How happy had she been? Her hand tightened on Tibby’s.
‘I was thinking about you, and the house, while we … while I was waiting for them to come and dig us out. I could remember it all as clearly as if I was really there. I thought I was a girl again, wearing a green cotton dress with a white collar, and white ribbons in my hair.’
‘I remember that dress,’ Tibby said. ‘I remember the day we bought it for you.’ She leaned forward, closer to Annie, and her fingers clutched more tightly. ‘It was very hot, the middle of a long, hot summer. You were six or seven, and you had gone to play for the day with Janet. Do you remember Janet? You were inseparable, and then the family moved away and you cried for a whole week, insisting that you would never have another best friend in all your life.’
‘I don’t remember her at all,’ Annie said.
‘Your father and I went shopping, and we bought you the green dress. When we came to pick you up you and Janet were playing in the garden, pouring water over each other with a watering can.’
‘Go on,’ Annie prompted her, and Tibby smiled. She began to talk. Some recollections made her laugh, and she sighed at others. She told stories about Annie’s childhood and babyhood that Annie had never heard before. She remembered the day that her daughter was born.