by Nevil Shute
“How nice of him,” the girl said.
She made her grandmother comfortable and went out quickly to get to the shops before they shut. She bought the things that the doctor had told her to buy and a little food for her own supper. On her way back to the house she passed the Electricity Department, and saw a light still burning in the office window, though the door was locked. She stopped, and rang the bell; the manager himself came to the door of the shop.
He peered at her in the half light, his eyes dazzled by the strong light at his desk. “It’s after hours,” he said. “The office is closed now. You’ll have to come back in the morning.”
“It’s me—Jennifer Morton,” she said. “I just looked in to thank you for turning on the electricity.”
He recognised her then. “Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “I rang up head office, and they gave permission.” In fact he had sat for an hour staring blankly at the calendar, unable to work, and with the girl’s words searing in his mind. Then he had rung up his supervisor and had repeated to him what Jennifer had said. He had added a few words of his own, saying that he had checked with the district nurse, and he was going to re-connect the supply. He had said quietly that they could take whatever action seemed best to them; if the job required behaviour of that sort from him, he didn’t want the job. He was now waiting for the storm to break, uncertain of his own future, unsettled and reluctant to go home and tell his wife.
“I’ve got my cheque-book here,” she said. “I can pay the bill now, if you like.”
It might soothe the supervisor if the cheque were dated on the same day as his own revolt. He showed her into the office and she sat down and wrote out the cheque; in turn he wrote out the receipt, stamped it, and gave it to her, “How is your grandmother tonight?” he asked.
“Not too good,” she replied. “She’s got a better chance now that we can get some warmth into the house. I’m sorry I said that to you this morning. One gets a bit strung up.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “Can’t you get her into the hospital?”
The girl shook her head. “She’s too old,” she said a little bitterly. “They don’t want people in there who are just dying of old age. She’s lost her pension because we’ve left India and the fund’s run dry. She can’t get an old age pension under the new scheme because she hasn’t contributed to it for fifteen years, or something. She’s spent all her capital in trying to live, and sold most of her furniture, and the bank won’t give her any more upon the house. There’s no place for old ladies in the brave new world.”
He tightened his lips, conscious of his own dark fears. “I know,” he said. “It’s getting worse each year. Sometimes one feels the only thing to do is to break out and get away while you’re still young enough. Try it again in Canada, perhaps, or in South Africa.”
She looked at him, startled. “Is that what you’re thinking of?”
“If I was alone, I’d go, I think,” he said. “But it’s the children—that’s what makes it difficult. They’ve got to have a home….”
She had no time to stay and talk to him; she cut it short and hurried back to the house. There was a telegram there now from her father saying that he was coming down next day without her mother, who was not so well, and enclosing a telegraphed money order for ten pounds. She put that in her bag and glanced at the two bills, one for groceries and one for milk, each with a politely-worded note at the bottom that was a threat of action. No good worrying her grandmother with those. She took off her coat and hat, and went upstairs with the letter from Australia in her hand.
In the bedroom the old lady was still lying in much the same position. She was awake and she knew Jennifer, but she was breathing now in an irregular manner, with three or four deep breaths and then a pause. There was nothing that Jennifer could do about it; the only thing was to carry on and do what the doctor had told her. It was time for another drink of warm milk, this time with brandy in it.
She gave the air-mail letter to her grandmother. “There’s an air-mail letter for you,” she said brightly. “Like me to get your glasses?”
“Please, dear. Did you see where it was from?”
“It’s from Australia.”
The old lady took the spectacle case with trembling hands, fumbling a little and put the glasses on, and looked at the letter. “Yes, that’s from dear Jane. So sweet of her to keep on writing, and sending me such lovely parcels. We must make a cake, Jenny. Such lovely things….”
Jennifer went downstairs and warmed the milk up in a saucepan on the stove and made herself a cup of tea at the same time; she mixed the Benger’s Food and added the brandy, and carried both cups up to the bedroom. She found her grandmother staring bewildered at a slip of paper in her hand, the envelope and the letter lying on the counterpane that covered her.
“Jenny,” she said weakly. “Jenny, come here a minute. What is this?”
The girl took it from her. It clearly had to do with banking; it was like a cheque and yet it was not quite an ordinary cheque. The words were clear enough, however. “It’s a sort of cheque, Granny,” she said. “It’s made payable to you, for five hundred pounds sterling. I’m not quite sure what sterling means. It seems to be signed by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. It’s as if the bank was giving you five hundred pounds.”
The old lady said, “It’s from Jane. She says so in the letter. Oh, my dear—we’ll have to send it back. Such a sweet child, but she can’t possibly afford it. She ought not to have done such a thing.”
“If she’s sent it to you, perhaps she can afford it,” the girl said.
“Oh, my dear, she’s only a farmer’s wife, living in quite a poor way, I’m afraid, and with all those children. Wherever would she get five hundred pounds?”
Jennifer said, “May I see her letter, Granny?”
“Of course, my dear.”
It was written in the round schoolgirl hand that Jane Dorman had never lost. The first four pages dealt with news of the older children, news of Angela at Melbourne University, news of Jack’s rheumatism, and news of the spring weather. It went on,
“Jack and I have been a little worried by the part of your letter where you said you hadn’t bought a new vest, and we have been wondering if rising prices are making things difficult for you. Out here everything is going up in price, too, but we station people are all making so much money that we hardly notice it. Jack’s wool cheque this year was for twenty-two thousand pounds, and though most of that will go in tax of course it means that we shall still have about seven thousand for ourselves after paying all the expenses of the property.
“We don’t know what’s the right thing to do with so much money. We can’t expect it to go on, of course; wool will come down again next year and it’s quite right that it should. It could fall to a quarter of the present price and not hurt us; the bank was all paid off last year and we’ve never spent much on ourselves, and we’re too old now to do much gadding about. We’re going down to Melbourne for a week or ten days after Christmas to do some shopping and Jack still talks of a trip home, but I don’t suppose we’ll really get much further than the Windsor Hotel.
“I’m sending with this letter a little bank draft for five hundred pounds, with our dear love. It doesn’t mean anything to us now, because we have more than we can ever spend. If you don’t need it, will you give it to some charity in England for us? But we’ve been really worried about you since reading that letter about your vest, and Jack and I owe so much to you for all you did to help us thirty years ago. So if this will make things easier for you, will you take it with our very dearest love?
“Your affectionate niece,
“JANE.”
The girl laid the letter down. “It’s all right, Granny,” she said a little unsteadily. “She’s got all the money in the world. They’re making twenty-two thousand pounds a year—at least, I think that’s what she means.”
“Nonsense, my dear,” the old lady said weakly. “She’
s only a farmer’s wife. Stations, they call them in Australia, but it’s only a big farm and not very good land, I’m told. She’s made some mistake.”
The girl wrinkled her brows, and glanced at the letter again. “I don’t think it’s a mistake—honestly. It’s what she says, and I was reading something about this in the paper the other day.” She laid the letter down. “Look, drink your milk before it gets cold.”
She held the old lady upright with one arm, and raised the cup to her lips. She could not get her to drink much, and the effort seemed to tire her, because she lay back on the pillows with her eyes closed, disinclined to talk. Jennifer removed the letter and the envelope to a table at the bedside and put the bankers’ draft upon the dressing-table, carefully weighted with an embossed Indian silver hand-mirror.
She went downstairs to get her own supper. Meat and eggs were out of the question, of course, but she had got herself a piece of cod and some potatoes and carrots. She put the cod on to boil because she would not encroach upon her grandmother’s fat ration or open the tin of lard, and she peeled some of the potatoes and carrots to boil those. This insipid meal was normal to her life and she thought nothing of it; she had bought a pot of jam and some buns and a piece of cheese to liven it up a bit. She started all this going on the stove, and slipped upstairs to see how her grandmother was getting on.
The old lady had not moved, and she seemed to be asleep. Her breathing, if anything, was worse. To Jennifer as she stood motionless in the door, looking at her, she seemed smaller and more shrunken, further away. The room seemed suddenly a great deal colder; she shivered a little, and went in softly and turned on the second element of the electric stove.
As she ate her supper at the kitchen table she wondered what could best be done for her grandmother in the new situation presented by this five hundred pounds. Her father was coming down next day and he would decide what was the best course; she was rather ignorant about the practical points of illness and of nursing, but she knew that this five hundred pounds would make a difference. Perhaps it would be possible to get the old lady into a nursing home, or clinic. She knew that her parents had no money to spare; it was only with difficulty that they could keep up her father’s considerable life insurance and endowment premiums; they had their own old age to think about. It had probably been a real difficulty for her father to send her ten pounds at a moment’s notice, as he had that day.
She went up once or twice to look into the bedroom, but she did not speak; better to let her grandmother rest quietly till it was time for her next cup of milk food and brandy. She took that up after a lapse of two hours, and spoke to the old lady. “I’ve made you some more Benger’s, Granny,” she said quietly. “Are you awake?”
The old eyes opened. “I’m awake, Jenny. I’ve been thinking about so many things.”
The girl sat down beside her and raised her in the bed with an arm round the old shoulders, and held the cup for her to drink. “What have you been thinking about?” she asked.
Her grandmother said, “About when I was a girl, my dear, and how different things were then.”
Jennifer asked, “How were they different, Granny? Drink it up.”
She took a little sip. “It was all so much easier, dear. My father, your great-grandfather, was in the Foreign Office, but he retired early, when I was about fifteen. Before that we lived in a big house on Putney Hill, near where Swinburne lived, but when he retired, in about 1886, we moved down into the country. My father bought Steep Manor near Petersfield with about thirty acres of land. I don’t think his pension and my mother’s investments together amounted to more than a thousand pounds a year, but they seemed to be able to do such a lot with it, such a great, great deal.”
“Drink a little more,” the girl suggested. “What sort of things did you do?”
“Everything that gentlefolk did do in those days, dear. My father kept three maid-servants in the house—everybody did then. And there was a gardener, and a gardener’s boy who helped in the stables and a groom. That was before the days of motor-cars, of course. My mother had her carriage with a pair of matched greys, such a pretty pair. My father and Tom and I all had our hacks, or hunters as we liked to call them, because we followed the hunt every week all through the winter.”
She sat in silence for a time; the girl held her, motionless. “I had a chestnut mare called Dolly,” she said. “Such a sweet little horse. I used to groom her myself, and she always knew when I was coming because I always brought her a lump of sugar or an apple, and she would put her head round, and whinny. Tom rode her sometimes, and she could jump beautifully, but I never jumped her myself except over a ha-ha or a ditch, because I rode side-saddle of course, in a habit. We thought it was very fast when girls began to ride astride in breeches just like men. I think a habit looks much nicer.”
The girl held the cup to the old lips again. “Wasn’t it dull, just living in the country?” she asked.
“Oh, my dear, it wasn’t dull. There was always such a lot to do, with the servants and the gardens and the greenhouses and the horses. We kept pigs and we used to cure all our own hams and bacon. And then we used to give a dance every year and all our friends did the same, and the Hunt Ball, and people coming to stay. And then there were all the people in the village to look after; everybody knew everybody else, and everybody helped each other. There was never a minute to spare, and never a dull moment.”
She took a sip of the milk that Jennifer pressed on her. “We always had a week in London, every year,” she said. “We used to stay at Brown’s Hotel in Dover Street, generally in May or June. It was theatres and dances every night. I was presented at Court in 1892, to the Prince of Wales, and the old Queen came in for a moment and we all curtsied to her, all together. The lights, and all the men in their scarlet and blue dress uniforms, and the women in Court dress, with trains—I don’t think I ever saw anything so splendid, except perhaps at the Durbar in nineteen hundred and eleven.” She paused. “You haven’t been presented, have you, Jenny?”
The girl said “No Granny. I don’t think it happens so much now.”
“Oh, my dear, how much, how very much you young girls have to miss. We had so much, much more than you when we were young.”
Jennifer tried to get her to drink a little more, but the old lady refused it. “Garden parties all through the summer,” she murmured, “with tea out on the lawn under the cedar tree. There was tennis on the lawn for those who felt like it, but archery was what everybody went in for. We had a special strip of lawn by the herbaceous border that we kept for archery, and the targets upon metal stands, stuffed with straw, with white and red and blue and gold circles. Such a pretty sport upon a sunny afternoon, dear, with the sun and the scent of mignonette, between the cedar and the monkey-puzzle tree….”
The old eyes closed; it was no good trying to get her to take any more of the Benger’s Food. The girl withdrew the cup and put it on the side table, and gently relaxed her arm to lay the old head down upon the pillow. Her grandmother seemed to sleep where she was put; the girl stood for a moment looking down at her as she lay with eyes closed. It didn’t look so good, but there was nothing more that she could do for the time being, except to change the hot-water bottles.
When she had done that, she went downstairs again. In spite of the bad night that she had had the night before she was not sleepy; there was a sense of urgency upon her that banished fatigue. She considered for a moment where she was to sleep, and put it out of her mind; the only possible place for sleep was the sofa in the drawing-room and that was much too far from the old lady’s bedroom. It was warm up in the bedroom, and she could shade the light; she would spend the night up there in the arm-chair again, within reach of her grandmother.
The doctor came at about eleven o’clock as he had promised; Jennifer was making another cup of the milk drink when he arrived, and she came out of the kitchen to meet him in the hall.
“Good evening,” he said. “How is she now?”
“Much the same,” the girl replied. “If anything, I think she’s a bit weaker.”
“Has she taken anything?”
“She takes about half a cup each time. I can’t get her to take more than that.”
“I’ll just go up and see her. You’d better come up, too.”
She was with him in the bedroom while he made his examination; the old lady knew him, but said very little. He made it short, bade her good-night cheerfully, and went downstairs again with Jennifer.
In the drawing-room he said, “I’m very sorry that there isn’t a nurse with you.”
She look at him. “You mean, she’s going?”
“She’s not making any progress,” he replied. “She’s weaker every time I see her. I’m afraid there’s only one end to that, Miss Morton.”
“Do you think she’ll die tonight?” the girl asked.
“I can’t say. She might, quite easily. Or she might rally and go on for days or even weeks. But her heart’s getting very bad. I’m afraid you’ll have to be prepared for it to happen any time.”
He spoke to her about the practical side of death, and he spoke to her about the continued effort to feed the old body. And then he said, “I rang up the relieving officer about her today. I think he’ll be coming round to see you tomorrow.”
She said, “That’s somebody who doles out money, isn’t it?”
“In a way,” he replied. “He has power to give monetary relief to cases of hardship that aren’t covered under any of the existing Acts. He’s a municipal officer.” He paused. “I wish I’d known about this patient earlier. I could have asked him to come round and see her months ago, but I had no idea.”
Jennifer said, “I don’t believe my grandmother would have seen him.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “She’d have looked on it as charity money. All her life she’s been more accustomed to giving to charities than taking from them.”
“He’s very tactful, I believe.”
