Treasures of Time (15 page)

Hugh died here. I came in and out, every day, those last horrid weeks, with that sick feeling inside me all the time. I didn’t care what I looked like; I used to catch sight of myself in mirrors and shop windows and it was a person I didn’t know, clothes put on all anyhow, hair stringy and no make-up. I couldn’t believe it was happening; I thought that kind of thing only happened to other people. It was like a bad dream, but one had always woken up from bad dreams.

The nurses all liked him; he was jokey with them, even when he was so ill; sometimes I was jealous, he seemed almost to prefer them to me. I used to sit by him, hour after hour, reading the paper to him, doing nothing, often, just sitting. I wanted to say things to him. I wanted to say I’m sorry, I can’t help it, I am like this, there is nothing I can do. I wanted to say I know, you think I don’t know, but I do, I always have. Sometimes I have seen myself, like another person, and hated it.

I used to hold his hand. Once, I fell asleep, and when I woke, he had taken his hand away and was staring out of the window.

Hugh died here. I only came twice, those last weeks. It wasn’t for me to intrude, they should have that time alone. I sent things to him with Laura – books and flowers from the garden and newspaper articles he would be interested in.

He was sixty; no great age. My age now.

Laura did not know he was going to die. The doctors told her, but in such a way that she did not have to hear if she did not want to. Every day, she was bright. She said, he is really much better, he sat up for a long time today, they are so pleased with how he is getting on, he will be out by the end of the month, with any luck.

The last time I saw him, we talked about a dig, and about Kate. He used to worry about Kate. He said, ‘What a long time we’ve known each other, Nellie, what years and years. Oh, well…’ We were there together in that narrow hospital room, with sun falling across a blue blanket on his bed. I knew he was going to die. I knew, and yet it was quite all right, quite calm. He was more important to me than anyone else, in all my life.

After he died Laura came to me. She stayed for weeks and months. I used to see her eyes looking out of her face, scared, like a child waking up in the dark, and I could not bear it.

The porter said, ‘Upsy daisy now, lady, easy does it. Will she want the rug round her knees?’

‘I do not want the rug round my knees,’ said Nellie. ‘Thank you all the same.’

Laura said, ‘Thank you
very
much. I’ll be able to manage on my own now.’ She gave him a nice smile. A tip would be out of place, she decided. A hospital is not like a hotel, or a taxi. She pushed the chair down the long corridors, though Nellie would have preferred to propel herself. In the waiting room, she found a battered and mature number of
Country Life
and sat reading it, her chair shunted a little apart from the other attendant relatives. Nellie struck up a conversation with an acquaintance made during her time as an in-patient. When her turn was called Laura rose to go into the doctor’s room with her, but was turned back by a nurse: ‘I think not, dear. I expect if you want to Dr Williams would have a word with you after.’ Laura, nettled, returned to
Country Life
.

When at last Nellie re-emerged she rose. ‘All set, darling? I’ll just pop in and see him myself for a moment.’

She found him tiresome, in fact, Dr Williams. One of those dapper, sexless, pink and white men. He had been a bit too inclined to tell one what was what when Nellie was in hospital. She sat down, without waiting for him to speak, and said, ‘Well, how do you find her? Very little change, I’m afraid.’

‘On the contrary, Miss Peters isn’t doing badly at all. There is a considerable improvement.’

Laura sighed, ‘She can do so little for herself, poor darling.’

The doctor smoothed out the papers on the desk in front of them, tapped them with a pencil. ‘The more that she does, the better, Mrs Paxton. She must be encouraged. I can’t stress that enough. She needs an atmosphere of optimism and encouragement.’

Such a brisk man, Laura thought. Horrid to have around if you were ill. ‘Really?’ she murmured.

‘A complete recovery is perfectly possible. But it depends very much on day-to-day progress, and that in turn depends on the people around her. You are managing all right, I take it, with such nursing as has to be done?’

‘Oh,’ said Laura, ‘one is managing, I suppose, yes, as best one can.’ She sighed again.

‘The physiotherapist is coming regularly, of course?’

That clumpy girl with the Birmingham accent – it was hard to understand how Nellie could stand being closeted with her once a week, but Nellie didn’t seem to mind. One heard them laughing together, though what there was to laugh about, with all those gruesome exercises to be done, it was hard to see. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘she comes.’

He was going on and on, in his rather hectoring way. I hate the smell of hospitals, she thought, and the noises, the way nurses’ shoes squeak on the lino, trolleys rattling around all the time. It makes me think of Hugh’s illness, that I don’t want to think of. She stared coldly at the doctor. He was off on another tack. ‘Recurrence?’ she said, sharply now.

‘I did warn when your sister was first ill that a stroke is very often followed by another. That is not to say that it will be, in her case, we can’t tell, but it is always a possibility.’

‘Oh, I think that’s most unlikely,’ said Laura energetically. What an absurdly pessimistic thing to say, she thought, doctors are supposed to cheer you up, not spread gloom and despondency. ‘No, there’s absolutely no sign of that, I can assure you.’ She got up. What nonsense, of course that is nonsense, Nellie may not be that much better, but she’s not going to die or anything. ‘Well, it’s been so kind of you to talk to me, Dr Williams, and it’s reassuring to hear that Nellie’s improving, though I’m afraid that all the same she is going to be rather dependent on one for a long time to come.’ She walked quickly out of the room, gathered up Nellie, hurried to the car. She felt a bit sick, her stomach heaved; it is rushing off so soon after breakfast, she thought, it upsets me, next time we must get the appointment for later on.

She talked, feverishly, all the way home. And what has got into
her
, Nellie thought, I know that voice, that look, it is when something has rattled her, when she is anxious. When the chasms yawn.

All my life, she thought, I have been exasperated by my sister. And unendurably sorry for her.

‘That’s all right,’ said Tony. ‘You didn’t get too much of a roasting from Kate, I hope. You do get pissed rather easily, don’t you? Look, what I was phoning about is, I’m going down to Danehurst on Friday to have a look through these papers of Hugh Paxton’s – Laura said something about bringing you and Kate down, I gather Kate’s car’s in dock, is that right? Fine. Right. Well now look, I’m in the studio till six at the earliest so it might save a bit of time if you came along there, and then we can get straight off. Good. Just wait in reception and I’ll be with you as quickly as I can.’

But in the event, there was a message awaiting them that Mr Greenway was delayed, and would they go through to the studio. A girl conducted them there and Tony broke free from a knot of shirt-sleeved figures to greet them. ‘Look, I’m so sorry, it’s been one of those days when not one bloody thing goes right. I thought, rather than kick your heels out there you might as well see what goes on here. We’re not actually recording, but I’m tied up for another twenty minutes or so. Marni will fill you in.’ He was breathing heavily, as though he had just taken vigorous exercise; his face shone with sweat.

It was amazing, Tom thought, that so many people should be required for whatever it was they were about (some discussion programme, as far as he could see). So many people walking around or standing in groups apparently locked in furious argument, or perched up in little seats behind cameras or squatting on the ground with earphones on, muttering away to no one. There was, indeed, an atmosphere of exhausted frenzy, bearing out Tony’s claim. A thin, handsome girl wearing a boiler suit of manifestly fashionable cut walked quickly past them, her knuckles ground into her temples. ‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘just sweet Jesus, that’s all.’ A man holding a clip-board shouted after her, ‘Look darling, either we chuck the lot or we think again. No way do I compromise.’ Up in the shadowy heights of the roof, a voice was shouting in some purely technical language. Cables hung around like lianas. Spotlights swivelled, and hit you savagely in the eye. Everyone smelled of sweat.

Tom thought of the nation, at the receiving end, slumped before its television set in torpid contemplation, teacup in hand.

‘O.K.,’ said Tony, joining them, ‘we’re packing it in now. Terribly sorry to have kept you. Lovely to see you, Kate.’ They went out to the car. Kate asked questions, politely; she had not, Tom knew, been at all interested. He said to Tony, ‘That all seemed an amazing amount of hassle. I shall bear it in mind when next I’m watching something.’ Tony said, ‘What?’; he was clearly stupid with exhaustion.

On the outskirts of London they stopped for a drink. Tony, picking up, said, ‘It’s awfully good of Laura to lay on this dinner tonight. Meeting Paul Summers will be a great help to me.’

Kate said sharply, ‘Dinner? I thought it was just us?’

‘Oh no. I gather she has Summers coming, and some people called Hammond, is it? Hammond, Hamilton. And someone else, I think.’

Typical, thought Kate. Not saying. So we arrive in the wrong clothes, and she can say, probably in front of everyone, Kate darling I do think just a little bit of an effort might have been made. And later, to me, and Kate dear I wonder if you could ever so tactfully sometime hint to Tom that when people are coming in… I know it’s tricky for him, to know what’s what, as it were.

‘Ah,’ said Tom, ‘fifteen love to Laura. Neat. And who’s Paul Summers?’

Kate took a gulp at her drink. ‘Paul Summers was Dad’s right-hand man, sort of. He was Field Officer at the Council for years and years. He’s something quite grand now, himself.’

‘Ministry of the Environment,’ said Tony.

‘Can I have another drink? It’s going to be an awful evening – so don’t say I didn’t warn you.’