bed. He thought this over, then offered to catheterize me. He did – quickly, painlessly. He had to find a kilner jar in the kitchen, no pot of course, and as there seemed no end to the stream of pee, he ran into the kitchen and searched frantically for anything, came back with a mixing bowl, into which the end of the rubber tube was transferred. Just in time. ‘Goodness,’ said he, admiring the quarts of pee.
‘How are you going to manage,’ he asked, ‘if there’s no nurse? Isn’t there a neighbour? How about someone on this floor?’
‘No,’ I said. I recognized on his face the look I’ve seen on, for instance, Vera’s, and have felt on mine: toleration for unavoidable eccentricity, battiness.
‘I could get you into hospital …’
‘No, no, no,’ I moaned, sounding like Maudie.
‘Oh, very well.’
Off he went, cheerful, tired, professional. You’d not know he was a doctor at all, he could be an accountant or a technician. Once I would not have liked this, would have wanted bedside manner and authority – but now I see Freddie’s point.
From the door, he said, ‘You were a nurse, weren’t you?’
This made me laugh, and I said, ‘Oh, don’t make me laugh, I shall die.’
But if he can say that, then it is Maudie I have to thank for it.
What would Freddie think of me now?
A nurse came in about ten, and a routine was established – around the animal’s needs. The animal has to get rid of x pints of liquid and a half pound of shit; the animal has to ingest so much liquid and so much cellulose and calories. For two weeks, I was exactly like Maudie, exactly like all these old people, anxiously obsessively wondering, am I going to hold out, no, don’t have a cup of tea, the nurse might not come, I might wet the bed … At the end of the two weeks, when at last I could dispense with bedpans (twice a day) and drag myself to the loo, I knew that for two weeks I had experienced, but absolutely, their helplessness. I was saying to myself, like Maudie, Well, I never once wet the bed, that’s something.
Visitors: Vera Rogers, on the first day, for I rang her saying she had to get someone to Maudie. She came in first before going to Maudie. I looked at her from where I lay absolutely flat, my back in spasm, her gentle, humorous pleasant little face, her rather tired clothes, her hands – a bit grubby, but she had been dealing with some old biddy who won’t go into hospital, though she has flu.
I told her that I thought there is more wrong with Maudie than the runs, found myself telling her about her awful slimy smelly stools. And I said that it was no good expecting Maudie to go into hospital, she would die rather.
‘Then,’ said Vera, ‘that is probably what she will do.’
I saw she was anxious, because she had said that: sat watching my face. She made us some tea, though I didn’t dare drink more than a mouthful, and we talked. She talked. I could see, being tactful. Soon I understood she was warning me about something. Talking about how many of the old people she looks after die of cancer. It is an epidemic of cancer, she said – or that is what it feels like to her.
At last I said to her, ‘Do you think Maudie has cancer?’
‘I can’t say that, I’m not a doctor. But she’s so thin, she’s just bones. And sometimes she looks so yellow. And I’ve got to call in her doctor. I must, to cover myself, you see. They are always jumping on us, for neglect or something. If I didn’t have to consider that, I’d leave her alone. But I don’t want to find myself in the newspapers all of a sudden, Social Worker Leaves 90-Year-Old Woman to Die Alone of Cancer.’
‘Perhaps you could try a nurse again, to give her a wash? You could try her with a Home Help?’
‘If she’ll let us in at all,’ says Vera. And laughs. She says, ‘You have to laugh, or you’d go mad. They are their own worst enemies.’
‘And you must tell her I am ill, and that is why I can’t get in to her.’
Vera says, ‘You do realize she won’t believe it, she’ll think it is a plot?’
‘Oh no,’ I groan, for I couldn’t stop groaning, the pain was so dreadful (terrible, terrible, terrible!), ‘please, Vera, do try and get it into her head …’
And there I lie, with my back knotted, my back like iron, and me sweating and groaning, while Vera tells me that ‘they’ are all paranoid, in one way or another, always suspect plots, and always turn against their nearest and dearest. Since I am Maudie’s nearest, it seems, I can expect it.
‘You are very fond of her,’ announced Vera. ‘Well, I can understand it, she’s got something. Some of them have, even at their worst you can see it in them. Others of course …’ And she sighed, a real human, non-professional sigh. I’ve seen Vera Rogers, flying along the pavements between one ‘case’ and another, her hands full of files and papers, worried, frowning, harassed, and then Vera Rogers with a ‘case’, not a care in sight, smiling, listening, all the time in the world … and so she was with me, at least that first visit. But she has been in several times, and she stopped needing to cosset and reassure, we have been talking, really talking about her work, sometimes so funny I had to ask her to stop, I could not afford to laugh, laughing was so painful.
Phyllis visited, once. There she was (my successor?), a self-sufficient cool young woman, rather pretty, and I had only to compare her with Vera. I took the opportunity of doing what I know she’s been wanting and needing. She has been attempting my ‘style’, and I’ve told her, no, never never compromise, always the best, and if you have to pay the earth, then that’s it. I looked carefully at her dress: a ‘little dress’, flowered crêpe, skimpy, quite nice, and I said to her, ‘Phyllis, if that’s the kind of dress you want, then at least have it made, use decent material, or go to …’ I spent a couple of hours, gave her my addresses, dressmaker, hairdresser, knitters. She was thoughtful, concentrated, she very much wanted what I was offering. Oh, she’ll do it all right, and with intelligence, no blind copying. But all the time she was there, I was in agony, and I could no more have said to her, ‘Phyllis, I’m in pain, please help, perhaps we could together shift me a centimetre, it might help …’ than Freddie or my mother could have asked me for help.
And as for asking for a bedpan …
Mrs Penny saw my door open, and crept in, furtive with guilt, smiling, frowning, and sighing by turns. ‘Oh, you’re ill, why didn’t you tell me, you should ask, I’m always only too ready to …’
She sat in the chair Phyllis had just vacated, and began to talk. She talked. She talked. I had heard all of it before, word by word she repeats herself: India, how she and her husband braved it out when the Raj crumbled; her servants, the climate, the clothes, her dogs, her ayah. I could not keep my attention on it, and, watching her, knew that she had no idea whether I was listening or not. Her eyes stared, fixed, in front of her at nothing. She spilled out words, words, words. I understood suddenly that she was hypnotized. She had hypnotized herself. This thought interested me, and I was wondering how often we all hypnotize ourselves without knowing it, when I fell asleep. I woke, it must have been at least half an hour later, and she was still talking compulsively, eyes fixed. She had not noticed I had dropped off.
I was getting irritated, and tired. First Phyllis, now Mrs Penny, both energy-drainers. I tried to interrupt, once, twice, finally raised my voice: ‘Mrs Penny!’ She went on talking, heard my voice retrospectively, stopped, looked scared.
‘Oh dear,’ she murmured.
‘Mrs Penny, I must rest now.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear …’ Her eyes wandered off from me, she looked around the room, from which she feels excluded because of my coldness, she sighed. A silence. Then, like a wind rising in the distance, she murmured, ‘And then when we came to England …’
‘Mrs Penny,’ I said firmly.
She stood up, looking