The Woman Next Door (13 page)

Hortensia nodded. She was lying on her back, her legs elevated on a stack of pillows. She was, obediently, rotating her ankles. The nurse looked bruised, as if she’d thrown stones at him. But Hortensia seldom needed stones, her words were enough.

‘I’m leaving these here.’ He grouped the medicines onto the side-table, then he collected his bag and stepped out of the room.

He would be the fifth nurse in three days to walk out. Hortensia groaned.

Her mood lifted when Bassey entered. Luckily Bassey never required her to admit it, but Hortensia felt grateful. He had never managed, in the almost twenty years he’d worked for them, to anger her, to incite her to want to diminish him to dust. He was a quiet man who parried all of Peter’s attempts at friendly employerness. He did, however, assent to play chess. He embarrassed Peter, the first time they played, by beating him, Hortensia recalled, quite brutally. And then curiously never won again.

Bassey’s eyes were deepset, two sharp slits, his skin shiny.

He held an envelope with its flap unsealed. Inside was a folded piece of paper with the name of the guest house along its top edge. It said:

Okay.

Hortensia figured that meant Marion was coming. She was instinctively peeved that Marion hadn’t taken the trouble to specify a day, or a time, but then she accepted this was the only bit of control Marion had left in the whole arrangement. She would show up when she pleased, confident that Hortensia wasn’t really going anywhere. All Hortensia could do was wait.

Sure enough, the high-pitched voice at the front door, the merciless piercing of heels into the Macassar-ebony floor – it could only be one person. Bassey poked his head through the gap in the door to announce the guest, but Marion pushed past into the room before he could utter a sound.

‘Hortensia.’ She was stiff, perfunctory, which made Hortensia realise anew the intense difficulty of the task ahead.

‘Marion, please do sit down.’

Bassey ducked out, but Hortensia called him back, asked Marion if she wanted anything. She asked for lemonade and Bassey left to fetch it. Hortensia thought it sensible to wait for him to come back with the drink before commencing. Once she started, she had to just go with no interruptions. Marion sat quietly, uninterested in the seeming trifles of the sickbed – where does it hurt? How long will it take to heal? And so on. Bassey entered into their tight silence and, after arranging Marion’s glass on a side-table, retreated once more.

‘I was quite busy. I couldn’t come immediately.’

‘I’m glad you’re here.’ Hortensia could not remember the last time she was this intent on being agreeable. It felt like play-acting.

‘Yes, well, what did you want? I’d rather not discuss paperwork with you, but I’m glad there’ve been no shenanigans from the insurers.’

Hortensia wasn’t entirely sure what this meant. Best to ignore it.

‘Well, as I said in my note’ – typical, Hortensia thought, that Marion would make such a show of not remembering – ‘I wanted a chance to apologise in person.’

Marion sat to attention, as if the National Anthem was about to be played and she was required to put hand to heart. Hortensia swallowed. She’d promised herself she’d keep it short: the more you spoke, the less apologetic you sounded.

‘I realise I have done you a wrong. Your house is in tatters, and that is my fault. I am sorry.’

Whether due to its brevity or, Hortensia hoped, its startling honesty, somehow Marion became angered by the apology. Maybe that’s true of all apologies, Hortensia considered, giving permission for the wronged party to rant. Maybe that was all the crane-driver had been avoiding. But she, Hortensia, was enjoying the fact that she’d upset Marion by apologising with integrity, it felt like a double victory.

‘… and we all know how that can go,’ Marion was saying. ‘I cannot afford to compromise the sale – everything must be perfect. And to top it off, forget the house, let me tell you. On the other side of that wall, by the way, was a painting. An original. Possibly somewhere destroyed.’ Marion raised herself up in her seat. ‘A Pierneef. So you can’t just blurt out three sentences and think you’re done with that. You have caused me so much trouble. So much.’

Hortensia had never been a fan of landscape art, but the expression on Marion’s face did not invite discussion on the topic.

‘Marion,’ she said, lowering her voice to the softest she knew how to. ‘I am truly sorry.’

Marion stood up. She’d only drunk about half of the lemonade, but Hortensia could tell she was now going to leave. And she did. The whole episode gave Hortensia a sense of longing that she had nowhere to put.

THE CONSTANTINOPLE HOSPITAL
called to ask what had happened between Hortensia and the last nurse. Hortensia wished they wouldn’t. She had said, from the very first sniff of the suggestion, that she neither needed nor wanted a nurse. Well, the head-nurse huffed (a much more toned-down version of heffing), they were having some difficulty scheduling another nurse. And did Hortensia know that they’d never experienced this before and, well, they had to see to it, because they were responsible for her health and they were only trying to help. Alright, Hortensia said. Hoping the less she said, the shorter the call would be, the sooner the annoyance would end. Well, the nurse continued, she would have to go away and then come back. Okay, Hortensia ended the call, liking the first part of the woman’s statement and hoping the second would never come to pass.

In the meantime she devised her own plans.

‘Bassey!’ she called.

Bassey walked in.

‘Now,’ Hortensia started, ‘I am going to need a bit of … help.’

She had solved the matter of ablutions in two ways. The easier activity only required that Bassey place the low table and the steel bowl of warm water within arm’s reach. A clean sponge, white soap on a wooden tray. For the more private activity, Hortensia grabbed as much dignity as she could; she pointed Bassey towards the bedpan and explained to him what to do when she (thanks to the exercises she’d been doing daily since leaving the hospital) bridged and formed a gap between her bottom and the bed, through which he could slide the pan. Employer and employee came closer than they had ever been. An intimate smell embraced them.

‘I’m ordering a commode,’ Hortensia called after him as he walked down the hall to dispose of her waste. ‘And a nurse.’

She reached for the private-care brochures, dialled the number. As she waited for the receiver to pick up, she ran her fingers over the duvet cover. She’d missed her fortnightly call with the House of Braithwaite head-designers. As her age had advanced, Hortensia had grudgingly stopped insisting that all designs go through her for approval. When they’d moved to South Africa, she’d sold her share of the studio to her partner Adebayo and opened a Cape Town branch. In addition House of Braithwaite still operated out of the studio in London. It was only in 2000, seventy and tired, that Hortensia stopped going into work every day. Advances in technology meant she could conduct meetings from home and she prided herself on knowing everything that was going on in her company. Sometimes on the calls, though, she wondered if she detected a sense of condescension, as if her design staff were humouring her, a terrible habit the young have when relating to the old.

On the other end of the line, someone finally picked up. Hortensia cleared her throat. ‘Hello? … Yes. I’d like to order a nurse. About five-foot four-inches, 52 kilograms or thereabouts. Age between forty and fifty. Preferably unmarried. No children. I don’t want someone who ta—Hello?’

Her physiotherapist was a tall woman with short yellow hair that curled back off her forehead and around her ears. She had large feet clad in the plastic Crocs Hortensia abhorred. She – her name was Carole with an e – had a rough manner which Hortensia was grateful for. The woman, who looked to Hortensia like she was pushing fifty, had no sympathy for her patient’s condition. Rather she seemed annoyed that a stupid old woman had broken her leg – all this suited Hortensia.

‘I see we can’t seem to find you a nurse,’ Carole said.

Hortensia smiled to indicate her innocence in the matter.

The physio had been visiting three times a week, although she’d explained that these visits would wane as the fracture healed. Hortensia relaxed with Carole, allowed her to conduct her work of taking her body through a series of exercises. She especially obliged with the exercises, eager to be strong again and capable of doing things for herself.

The only hazard she had to endure with Carole was her insistence on explaining everything to Hortensia as if she were a child. It wasn’t as much what she said as how she said it, her tone dragging – all the easier for the dim-witted Hortensia to grasp.

‘We need to get to weight-bearing strength,’ was Carole’s mantra through all and any exercise regimen.

There was a set order to Carole’s visits. She arrived and, after no pleasantries but several questions as to the state of Hortensia’s leg muscles, they started the bed exercises. Usually, after the bed exercises, Carole would struggle along and manage to get her patient into a chair, but on the third visit she relented.

Carole hefted Hortensia into a sitting position on the bed, then after a few minutes she asked if the big black man who’d let her in could help get Hortensia into the armchair.

‘His name is Bassey,’ Hortensia said, with a tightness in her jaw as she pressed the button she’d had installed.

Bassey arrived and obliged.

Carole assembled the commode. Later she leaned against the wall in the hallway as Hortensia walked its length, manoeuvring the walker – a new addition to her routine. She hated it, found it offensive. A metal thing with no class.

‘See,’ Hortensia said as she walked along with great difficulty and little grace. ‘I don’t need a nurse.’

‘We can’t just leave you, Mrs James. It’s been bad enough that so many days have passed with little supervision. What about the night hours?’

‘What about the night hours?’

‘What if something happens? You fall, you need something. I asked, and the big … Bassey doesn’t live on the premises.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

Carole rolled her eyes. ‘We will be contacting you, Mrs James. Another thing: next week I won’t be here.’

‘Oh dear,’ Hortensia said and meant it.

Carole made a face. An attempt, Hortensia felt, at a smile.

‘It’s all rather sudden, but I’m getting married this weekend. I’m going on my honeymoon.’

‘How nice,’ Hortensia said, not meaning it. ‘So, what? I’ll hear from the hospital?’

‘Uhm, they should call, yes. All the best, Mrs James.’

The hospital did not call. Instead, Hortensia could hear the voice of … Dr Mama? She listened to the sound of two people walking down the generous passageway.

‘The doctor is here,’ Bassey announced and closed the door behind him.

‘Dr Mama!’ She was genuinely surprised.

He’d been Peter’s GP. She hadn’t seen him in almost two years.

‘Mrs James, what terrible circumstances, but … still it’s good to see you.’

He was bifocals-wearing, grey-hair-having. Hortensia put a smile on her face. She’d learned, especially in Cape Town, that a smiling black woman was a dangerous weapon in its apparent innocuousness. It was what she thought of as a decoy, something to distract people with, while she worked out where their weak points were.

‘What a surprise!’

‘Well, news gets around – I had to come.’

‘Nonsense. How kind.’ Right then she remembered his voice. Explaining her husband’s disease, warning and preparing her.

‘You look too happy for someone with a broken leg.’ He came to stand close to the bed.

And the next surprise was that she found him handsome. Where had that come from? She hadn’t thought that two years ago.

‘I’m always happy,’ Hortensia lied and was pleased to hear her own laughter follow the preposterous claim.

Dr Mama laughed too. He had one dimple on his left cheek. His eyes were clear. His skin was dark and smooth and reminded Hortensia to add 85-per-cent Lindt to Bassey’s shopping list.

‘How’s the pain? Is this the medication you’ve been taking?’ He perused the medicines on the bedside table – a collection of Celebrex, the anti-inflammatory, paracetamol and an analgesic.

‘What pain?’ Hortensia said, laughed again. She was enjoying the laughing; there was seldom a reason, but Dr Mama seemed a good enough one.

‘You know what they say,’ he continued. ‘At our age, if you awake with no pain you’re probably dead.’

Again laughter.

‘On a more serious note, I’m sure you’re a strong woman. But if the pain’s too much, it’ll affect your rest. How’s your sleep?’

Hortensia rearmed herself. Doctors were not as bad as nurses, but still, you had to be wary. If he even so much as glanced at her in a …

‘Hmm?’

‘Pardon, sorry I didn’t catch that.’

‘Sleep, Mrs James.’

‘Hortensia, please.’

‘Hortensia, do you go for eight hours unbroken – seven at least?’

She laughed, this time with mirth. ‘I haven’t slept for seven hours straight since I was a design student. Come on, Doctor.’

‘Gordon.’

‘Gordon.’

‘Okay, well, we’ll need to do something about that, then.’

‘I won’t take sleeping pills.’

‘I understand, I wasn’t going to propose any.’

‘Good.’

‘Maybe some relaxing thoughts before bed? Do you find you sleep during the day?’

‘Sometimes. Not much else to do.’

‘Try and avoid this. I think of it as saving up the hours for the night-time rather than spending them in daylight.’

She smiled, a clean one with no malice.

‘I’ll also change your pain-medication. And I’ll prescribe some probiotics. Who’s been administering the daily injection – the Warfarin?’

‘Ah, highlight of my day. Carole showed Bassey how to do it.’

He nodded. ‘So, I’ll take these away …’ He juggled things, replacing bottles with bottles as far as Hortensia could tell. ‘You’ll keep taking it at the same times – here, I’ll leave you this label. I’ll explain to the gentleman before I leave.’