Perfectly Correct (8 page)

‘But what if she were to be ill? Or have a fall?’

‘She doesn’t look like the sort of old lady who has falls,’ Louise said unkindly. ‘She looks like the sort of old lady who would have to be pushed.’

‘Oh really, Louise!’

Louise scowled. ‘I can’t be responsible for her, Miriam. I really can’t.’

‘Well, someone ought to be,’ Miriam said. ‘Would you mind if I went and had a word with her? There are permanent sites in the county, I checked before I came out. I brought a leaflet with a map, just in case she didn’t know.’

Louise hesitated, wondering whether the old lady would speak of Toby. She shrugged. It would be Toby’s own fault for getting so intimate with her. ‘If you must. I was just about to serve supper.’

‘I’ll only be a sec,’ Miriam promised and slipped out of the kitchen door.

The sun was low on the horizon, casting a pale yellow light across the garden and greenish shadows. Small bats circled and dipped in the air, moving almost too fast to be seen. The night-scented flowers made the garden sweet and dreamy. Miriam walked slowly across the grass where the daisies had already closed their pink-tipped faces against the dusk. Her anxieties and irritations with the imperfect world drained away from her. She breathed in. The air was clean and sweet, still warm, and with the promise of warmth for tomorrow, and for four months of tomorrows.

The summer had always been Miriam’s favourite time of year. No-one who had ever seen her sprawled in the grass outside the library with a book over her sleeping face could
doubt the natural order of things which made the sun always shine on her. Punctual and reliable in autumn and winter with essays well-written and cogently argued, her work went to pieces in spring and disappeared completely during the summer term. Her midsummer essays were always late and always crumpled and dusty as if they had been written in a garden under a tree, resting on the grass messy with fertile pollen. Her hair, tidily brushed in the dark months, took on glints from the sun, and grew wild and curly around her face which became first flushed and then freckled and then brown.

In the long summer vacations Miriam would always go abroad. She and Louise hitch-hiked or travelled by train to the south of France, Spain, or Italy in long idyllic holidays only marred by the delay of drafts of money from home, or by the occasional wet day when Miriam would droop and exclaim at the impossibility of the Mediterranean being cold.

Abstemious for the rest of the year, Miriam was a glutton and a drunkard in summer. She would eat a pound of peaches in one sitting. She would drink lager in pint glasses. And in summer, Miriam was joyfully wanton.

It was no accident that she had found her radical feminist conscience in the darkening autumn of her last year at university and that in her final summer she had been too harassed by exams to respond to the weather. Then she had taken the job in the women’s refuge and all her subsequent summers had then been marked by the stuffiness of the cramped office and the rancid smell of her sweating clients. For three weeks every year Miriam and Toby went cycling in France and once again Miriam would lie in the sun and melt into Toby’s kisses. But these were holidays from reality. Miriam’s adult self was wintry and serious.

The old lady was sitting on her steps, watching the sun go slowly down. The windscreen twinkled with the yellow light as if it were clean. Her lined face was golden in the light, she looked like some wise old priestess at a shrine where anyone in need could go for assistance. She smiled as she saw Miriam approaching as if she knew all about her.

‘Hello,’ Miriam said pleasantly. ‘I’m Miriam Carpenter, a friend of Louise’s. I work with homeless women in Brighton. I just popped out to see if there was anything I could do to help you.’

The old lady smiled at her, her face crazing into a thousand wrinkles. ‘What help could you possibly give me?’ she asked.

Miriam, more accustomed to needy clients, failed to hear the arrogant emphasis. ‘I could help you get on a housing list,’ she said eagerly. ‘Or get this van on to a permanent site where you could have running water, and showers and toilets. That’d be something, wouldn’t it? They have electricity at the sites. You could have a television.’

The old lady chuckled. ‘I don’t want any of that.’

Miriam felt checked. ‘Medical care?’

The old woman grew suddenly grave. ‘I won’t be needing that,’ she said. ‘Nature will take its course.’

‘You might have a fall,’ Miriam suggested. In Miriam’s world women over sixty were always falling and needing replacement hips, just as women of forty were always getting hot and needing hormone replacement therapy. The female body was in continual need of attention and assistance.

The old lady put her hand out to Miriam. Miriam stepped forward and clasped it. The touch of the old lady’s hand was warm and dry as a snakeskin. ‘I’ve not got long to live,’ she said gently. ‘Just a month at the most. So I don’t need
anything, but it was kind of you to offer. I just want to be left in peace.’

There was a short stunned silence. ‘You’re dying?’ Miriam asked incredulously.

The old lady nodded, her eyes on Miriam’s face. ‘That’s why I wanted to be here,’ she said gently. ‘In this orchard. I was born here and I’ve been here every May for the last thirty years. I had a fancy to die here. Die here and have my van burned with my body.’

‘You’re a Romany,’ Miriam said, her voice very gentle with respect.

The old woman smiled at her. ‘I like the old ways. I want to die here, where I was born. Do you think she’ll let me?’

‘What about a hospice?’ Miriam asked.

‘A hospital? No, I don’t like hospitals.’

‘No, no, a hospice. A special place, like a rest home. People go there when they are very sick, going to die, and the staff are specially trained to understand and to be with you, to control the pain and help you.’

The old lady looked slightly alarmed. ‘That doesn’t sound much fun. I wouldn’t like one of them at all.’ She pressed Miriam’s hand gently between her own. ‘It’s hard for someone like you to understand, I know,’ she said. ‘But really, I just want to go quietly, in my own bed, in the place I was born. I want to be on my own,’ she insisted. ‘No-one fussing around me, and someone to burn my things when I’m dead.’

Miriam, who had counselled a thousand women distressed by less, felt her throat tightening. ‘You’re very brave.’

The old woman smiled. ‘Will you help me – to stay here and die as I’ve lived? As I want to die?’

Miriam blinked rapidly. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course. I’ll
settle it with Louise and if you change your mind I’ll see if I can book a place in the hospice if you need extra help. Do you have enough to eat? Fresh water?’

‘I’ll thank you for a jug of fresh water,’ the old woman said meekly. ‘I’ve been thirsty, but I didn’t like to go to the back door in case I was intruding.’

Miriam took the jug without comment and hurried to the kitchen door. The kitchen was filled with rich-smelling steam. Louise had taken the casserole from the oven and was adding a generous glass of wine to the gravy.

‘She needs water,’ Miriam said with emphasis, filling the jug at the kitchen sink.

‘She always does,’ Louise replied, stirring and tasting with relish. ‘She must drink a gallon a day.’

Miriam said nothing but took the jug out to the van again.

‘Don’t say nothing to her about me dying,’ the old woman said to Miriam. ‘I don’t want to worry her. I don’t want to make a fuss. If you can get her to let me stay, that’s all I want. Can you do that?’

Miriam had been strictly trained in client confidence. ‘I won’t tell anyone until you say I may,’ she agreed. ‘Can I book a place in the hospice in case you need it?’

The old woman smiled as if she were giving Miriam a concession. ‘If it would make you feel better,’ she said. ‘But I shan’t go anywhere else. I want to die here.’

‘You shall do it as you want!’ Miriam promised. ‘I have to go in now. Do you have everything you need? Do you have enough food?’

‘I’ve had trouble lighting my stove today. I’ll just eat some cheese and biscuits tonight. I don’t need much. I’ll have a hot meal tomorrow or the next day.’

‘I’ll bring you out some of what we’re having,’ Miriam
promised. ‘We’re having chicken casserole. Would you like some?’

‘Thank you,’ the old woman said with dignity. ‘That would be very nice.’

Miriam smiled and was about to go back to the house.

‘And do you teach at the university too?’ the old woman asked.

‘No. I work at a refuge for women who have been beaten by their partners. And I work with women alcoholics and with women who have been abused.’

The old woman looked shocked. ‘A young thing like you!’ she exclaimed.

Miriam smiled. ‘I’m not so very young. I’m thirty.’

‘Thirty,’ the old woman said thoughtfully. ‘But how long have you been doing this?’

‘Since I left university. Nearly nine years now.’

The old woman looked at Miriam with a strange expression. Miriam stared back, trying to read the face. She looked as if she were pitying Miriam. This was a sensation so strange that Miriam felt almost offended. For the past nine years Miriam had been in a position to pity others. The reversal of the roles made her feel disorientated and uneasy.

‘’Bout time you did something for yourself then,’ the old woman remarked. ‘Nine years on other people’s troubles is much too long.’

‘I enjoy my work,’ Miriam said, steadfastly smiling.

The old woman snorted. ‘Lady Bountiful,’ she said spitefully. ‘You should look to what’s going on in your own backyard. It’s not very long, my dear, before you’re dead and buried and all you’ll have done is worry about other people’s troubles.’

Miriam shook her head, trying to keep the smile on her
face. ‘I do make a difference,’ she said. ‘I get women rehoused, I help to change their lives.’

‘Pot calling the kettle black,’ the old woman said churlishly. ‘You should be rehousing yourself, my girl. Change your own life.’

Miriam began to understand why Louise did not want this woman in her orchard. ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring you your dinner in a moment.’

The old woman smiled, her good humour undisturbed. ‘You run along. Find someone else to worry about.
I’m
all right.’

Louise was reluctant to let Miriam out of the door with a plate of chicken casserole, fearing that she would set a precedent and the old woman would arrive for breakfast, lunch and dinner thereafter. But no-one could ever stop Miriam from doing what she knew to be right. Louise let her go.

‘You must let her stay here, Louise,’ Miriam said firmly. ‘She told me something in confidence which I can’t tell you, but you really do have to let her stay here.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Louise demanded. ‘She’s going as soon as the gear box is fixed. That’s the agreement.’

Miriam shook her head. ‘I want you to promise me that you’ll let her stay. I promise you she’ll not be here longer than a month. I give you my word, Louise. It’s just a month.’

Louise put their own plates down and plonked salt and pepper in the middle of the table. She poured more wine. She looked sulky. ‘You wouldn’t be so keen if it was your garden.’

‘I probably wouldn’t,’ Miriam admitted honestly. ‘But she’s where she wants to be. Listen, I’m making arrangements
for her accommodation. If the problem is not resolved in a month I’ll find her a place in the h …’

‘A place in the h …?’

Miriam shook her head. ‘I really can’t say. But I promise you that she won’t be with you for more than a month.’

Louise sighed. ‘I don’t want her. I don’t see why I should
have
her.’

‘Well, you’ve got her. Just put up with her for a month. Twenty-eight days. It’s not much to ask. And it’s not as if you do a lot for the homeless.’

‘All right,’ Louise conceded grudgingly. ‘But she’s to go in a month without fail. And if anyone tries to join her –’ Louise was thinking about Captain Frome’s warning of family camps. ‘If anyone tries to join her I’ll have them all moved on.’

‘She doesn’t have anyone travelling with her. She specifically told me that she wanted to be here on her own.’

‘All right then.’

The two women ate in silence.

‘She told me a funny thing,’ Miriam said. ‘She told me I should change my own life, look at my own backyard.’

Louise glanced up, a forkful of casserole poised.

‘It’s true,’ Miriam said. ‘I spend all my life organising other people and I never look at what I’m doing. At where we live. At Toby and me.’

‘But you’re all right, aren’t you?’ Louise had no false delicacy warning her not to tread in difficult areas. Miriam had shared the difficulties of her relationship with Toby from the very beginning. Louise’s intimacy with them both was reinforced by the fact that she always heard of every marital squabble from both sides. On many occasions she had acted as unpaid (and untrained) counsellor, explaining
Miriam’s feelings to Toby and vice versa. That her insight into Toby’s feelings came from her love affair with him did not seem, to Louise, to disqualify her from taking a neutral viewpoint. And indeed, Miriam had always found Louise supportive and sympathetic. There were few things Louise enjoyed more than dissecting her lover’s psychology with his wife.

‘We’re all right,’ Miriam agreed. ‘But nothing more than all right. We share a house. We often eat together. We sleep in the same bed. Sometimes we make love. It’s OK but you couldn’t say it was wildly exciting. We’re not close any more, if you know what I mean.’

Louise nodded encouragingly. ‘Is he withdrawn?’

‘Not him,’ Miriam said. ‘It’s me. I can’t even tell you why. I’m really busy all the time, and the work I do – well, of course it’s depressing. I’m home after him in the evening and then I spend an hour on the telephone. I’m out of the house before him in the morning. We saw more of each other when you were there, actually. We always had dinner together then.’

Louise hid her pleasure. ‘Don’t the two of you eat with Hugh?’

Miriam shook her head. ‘Toby doesn’t cook like he used to,’ she said. ‘Last time he did a proper meal was when you came.’