“I mustn’t keep you, Pam. But about Sebastian – you don’t mind if I drop over there to see him occasionally?”
“Of course not. Only too grateful.”
“I’m afraid Mrs. Blot doesn’t like my visits. That’s putting it mildly, in fact.”
“I’ll have a word with her about it. She can be a bit of a toad, and that’s a fact; I guess she’s come to think of the place as her territory. Anyhow, pay no attention; go over whenever you like. I think her day off is Thursday, in case that’s relevant. Myself, I quite enjoy a round or two with her.”
“What courage you’ve got. Anyhow, I still have the key you gave me before.”
“God knows,” she adds, “it would do Seb the world of good if you would teach him a wrestling hold or two, if only for laughs. Sometimes lately I get the feeling he’s letting go – giving up. And in spite of everything, and days when I really think euthanasia would be the best possible solution, I don’t want the old monster to die. It’s not that I’m fond of him, any more than he is of me, just that for some reason he’s important to me, don’t ask me why, a case of shingles would be easier to deal with by far, I suppose it’s a question of blood.”
His head is hanging off the pillow and in the half-light his skin looks grey, the closed eyelids purplish. For a second – long enough for my own breath to suspend itself – I think he is dead. Then I bend closer and see that a thick artery in his neck is pulsing.
“Sebastian,” I say loudly.
He releases a faint snore.
“Wake up, Seb,” I tell him. Worried by what Pam has told me, I’ve left work early to come here. It is not yet five in the afternoon, yet the window blind has been lowered and the bedside lamp switched off. I draw up the blind and pallid winter sunlight bursts into the stuffy room. His wrinkled eyelids twitch.
“Sebastian, wake up.”
Blinking, he looks up at me without recognition; then his eyes sink shut again. I go down the hall and bring back a washcloth wrung out in cold water. With this I ruthlessly wash his face, which is thickly bristled with silver beard.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he mumbles, weakly trying to push away my hand.
“I am waking you up. This is no time to be sleeping, Seb; you’ll lie awake all night this way. Now come on, let’s get you sitting up. Then we’re going to have some tea.”
“Don’t want bloody tea.”
“Well, I do.” Down the hall in her room, Mrs. Blot is occupied with several guests of her own. They are so immersed in loud – even violent – conversation that nobody has noticed my diffident rap at the front door. So letting myself in with Pam’s key has been a quiet success, and being here without opposition – in secret, almost – gives me confidence. “Back in a tick,” I tell Sebastian, after heaving him into a sitting position and propping him there with pillows. “Don’t you go back to sleep now.” Down the stairs I go and in the deserted kitchen swiftly brew a strong pot of tea, which I take up to him.
“Now then, have some of this.” I hold out a cup from which steam curls comfortably.
“Don’t want it,” he says thickly. His breath is foul.
I clear room for the cup on his bedside table, which is crowded with various pharmaceuticals, including a plastic cylinder with a child-proof top. It contains a number of yellow capsules.
“What are these for, Seb?” I ask him. “Have you had some of these today? Look at them.”
He glances at the container vaguely. “No idea.”
“Are you sure? Why is there no label on the bottle?”
“Never touch drugs, stupid things. Nothing wrong with me but a little heart murmur. Silly quack with his whatdyecallit – listener thing. That bastard has grabbed Poland, man, we’re at war. I’m perfectly fit, my place is over there, don’t wag your silly head at me, it’s my duty.” He blinks at me and the room around him as if completely disoriented.
“Where’s bloody Pam, then?” he demands. “What hospital is this?”
“You’re home, Seb. And Pam will be round to see you, probably tomorrow.”
“Never said I wanted her here.”
“She’ll come anyway.”
“No doubt.”
“Well, tell me how you’re feeling. Still a bit sore from that fall, are you?”
“What fall? I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I’m thirsty.”
I steady his trembling hands around the cup with both of mine. The dragged-up pyjama sleeve exposes a large green bruise near the elbow. He sups at the tea greedily.
“There. That’s better, isn’t it?”
He shoots me an irascible glance. “Oh, stuff it, Nurse Bloody Rowena. What the hell is all that din out there?”
“Mrs. Blot seems to have company.”
“Ah, yes. Her daughters. They’re trying to get the poor bitch to go back to her husband. Lear’s offspring, Greek-Canadian variety. Voices like cormorants, they’ve got, even worse than Lowland Scots. Close the door, will you.”
“I thought about you on Christmas Day,” I tell him, pulling up a chair.
“Did you?” he says with interest. “I want more tea. Why did you do that?”
“Call it empathy.”
“I didn’t think about you,” he says. “Women are much better at that kind of thing than men. Whatever that proves. Did you not have a jolly yuletide full of merriment, then?”
“No, I did not.”
“Join the club. John gave me a tie and Pam a heating pad, no doubt fondly hoping I might electrocute myself with it. The only decent present I got, in fact, was from you, Rowena, and I drank that.”
“Good.”
There is an easy silence that distances the raucous argument down the hall. Sebastian munches a ginger biscuit, showering his bony chest liberally with crumbs. A sparrow lights on the windowsill and peers in at us with its bright bead of an eye. “Before I go, I’ll put out some crumbs there for him,” I say. “Birds are nice to look at.”
“Better at a distance, like most things. I remember as a small boy seeing a city all lit up at night – must have been Manchester – it looked like something magical out of Revelation; and when we got into the place, all there was to see were grotty streets and fish-and-chip shops. My first lesson in perspective.”
“Or maybe anatomy. We had to dissect a frog in high school biology class. I felt a bit sick, but fascinated, because the thing was so much more complicated and interesting inside than it was outside.”
“Was it? So are most people, I suppose – at least one hopes so. Let’s have a drink, Rowena.”
“What has Wittgenstein got to say about outsides and insides?” I ask, to divert him.
“Not a lot. On the other hand he did ask poignantly why philosophy is so complicated, when it should be perfectly simple. He concluded that the problem was not philosophy but our screwed-up thinking. In other words, if we could just think straight, all our confusion would disappear and truth would disclose itself.”
“And if it did that, would we all be serene and happy?”
“That he never said. But something of the kind may be implied in Philosophical Investigations, the work of his old age.” He reaches down a long arm and, wincing, draws up a shabby book from the pile by his bed. “Here, for instance, he says, ‘What we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of human beings.’ He was interested, y’see, in abstract ideas only as they relate to our lives – what we do, and in particular what we say.”
“Does he ever mention why some people so often say the wrong thing? Seems to me that’s not so much because of confused thinking as plain ill will and bad temper. And yet I like Ethel Wilson’s muddled sort of philosophy … it suits our muddled existence. She says she believes in God, ‘and in man, to some extent.’ The comma is perfect, isn’t it? I’ll bring you one of her books next time; I think you’d like them.”
“Curious thing, you know, about Wittgenstein – it’s always surprised me in anyone so disillu
sioned – but he’s on record as having said he wished his last book could do what Bach tried for – ‘to honour the most high God and to benefit my neighbour.’ ”
“What an aim. Covers everything.”
“I want a whisky, Rowena; how about it?”
“I don’t think so today, Seb.”
“Why not? You turned Moslem or something?”
“No, just that I have to go now. Next time, maybe.”
“I’m allowed two drinks, you know, before dinner.”
“I’ll come Thursday, Seb, and then I promise we’ll have a whisky together.”
“That’s Mrs. B.’s afternoon off.”
“I know.” Our eyes meet. One of his closes in a wink. Before I go, I heave open the window and scatter some crumbs for the bird. Then, when Sebastian’s attention is elsewhere, I slip the container of yellow capsules into my pocket. My quiet departure occurs without any interference or even sign of interest on the part of Mrs. Blot, which is a relief, because I am now not only afraid of her but to some degree afraid of myself.
“Mother.”
“Yes, Marion. Something wrong?”
“Have you got any painkiller in the house?”
Painkiller, I think, Sebastian’s sleeping face flashing into my mind. There are such things, but are they always a good idea?
“Yes, I think so, dear. Why do you need –?”
“I had a couple of impacted wisdoms out this morning. The dentist gave me something to take, but it’s no use at all.”
“Well, I think we have some 292s left over from that time your Dad sprained his knee. You just sit tight, dear, and I’ll come right over with them. Lucky thing I’m free – the shop’s closed because Arlene’s mother died.”
But Marion is not at all interested in the shop or in Arlene’s mother. “Right. Thanks,” she says curtly and rings off.
I hurry to ransack the medicine cabinet and pull on my outdoor things. Tom is due to pay his regular weekly call later on, but he (or, come to that, both of us) will just have to do without this time. Marion so seldom asks for help – or for anything – that her call has put me into a fluster. Halfway down the front path I have to hurry back for the tube of pills, and at the bus stop I discover I’ve snatched up a pair of mismatched gloves.
A ten-minute bus ride brings me to Marion’s apartment building, a yellow-brick, art deco structure built around a courtyard that in summer is made hideous by stiff beds of salvia. It looks much better now, heaped knee-deep with fresh snow the wind has moulded to porcelain smoothness. Marion is pacing the floor from front to back of her small space. One of her tight braids has pulled a little loose from its coil. In a controlled sort of way, she looks frantic.
“Here you are, dear. I think one, to begin with. How long ago did you take the other stuff?”
“Oh, I don’t know – don’t fuss, Ma – just give it to me.”
She pauses in her pacing just long enough to gulp down the pill with water I bring her from the bathroom.
“I wish I’d known you were having those teeth out, dear, so I could have arranged to be here when you got home. It’s no time to be alone, after a business like that. Would a cup of tea help at all?”
“Oh, don’t fuss.” She sits down briefly, but a moment later jumps up to pace the floor again.
“Was it one of those clinics they sent you to?” I ask, fidgeting sympathetically after her. She doesn’t answer, yet I hover near helplessly. It seems impossible just to sit down and get on with my knitting. “Those places … Cuthbert once had a bad time after an extraction … It’s like an assembly line; they work too fast.”
“Oh, it hurts, it hurts,” Marion says in a thin voice that seems to belong to someone else. She walks rapidly into and out of the bathroom, holding both hands to her face.
“Poor lamb. Look, let’s try an ice pack, it won’t take a minute.” Clumsy with haste, I crack ice cubes out of their tray and roll them in a clean dish towel. “Now hold this under your jaw, dear. It’s sure to help.”
Without breaking stride she takes the ice pack from me and continues pacing. For something to do, I go back to the kitchen and put the kettle on. A red geranium on the windowsill makes a little splash of colour in the dull room, but on closer inspection it turns out to be plastic. Everything on the counters and in the cupboards is almost clinically neat and spotless, but when it comes to detail, Marion’s taste runs oddly to cuteness. Her pot holders are shaped like pansies, and on the wall hangs a pink linen calendar depicting little Kate Greenaway girls watering flowers, skipping rope and dancing in a ring. When the tea is made I take the pot into the other room where poor Marion is still walking rapidly up and down. She waves away the tea, but I sit down and drink mine gratefully.
“No better at all?” I ask.
“No.”
“Well, if you get no relief soon, we’ll have to call your dentist.”
By the time my cup is empty she is pacing more slowly, but there is still a frightened look in her eyes that touches my heart. I have not seen Marion afraid since she was five and in a high fever cried out, “I’m growing! I’m growing!” It was one of the rare occasions when I felt really close to her; the bizarre size changes of Alice in Wonderland had frightened me as a child, too. And yet, the thought of growing shouldn’t scare anyone. It doesn’t scare Mrs. Wilson.
“Now that pill is starting to help, isn’t it, dear? Why don’t you sit down.”
Mumbling, “Sorry about the fuss,” she drops to the sofa where she puts her head back and closes her eyes. I take the ice pack from her gently and renew it in the kitchen.
“There you are. I’m so glad it’s a bit easier.”
“Bernice said she’d come over, but she hasn’t bothered.”
“Well, I suppose like me she finds it hard to get away in the afternoon.”
“Maybe.”
“What’s her job again – something in a lab, isn’t it?”
“She’s a qualified pharmacist now.”
“Oh, really? I wonder if – I came across some pills the other day – she could probably tell me what they are.”
“Bernice? She can’t tell her ass from her elbow these days.”
My eyebrows rise high. Marion does not normally use this kind of vocabulary – at least not in my hearing. I glance at her uneasily.
“What’s her problem, then?”
Eyes still closed, Marion says incisively, “She’s met a man, that’s her problem. A divorced man with a Volvo and a pot belly. And she’s over the moon because he’s taken her out a couple of times to a Thai restaurant, and sent her a fuchsia for Christmas.”
“Oh, really. Well, I suppose that’s nice for her.”
“Is it? Embarrassing, if you ask me, to see a woman make such a jackass of herself. She can’t talk about anything else. We were going skiing last weekend, but she wouldn’t go in case he called. Silly ass.” Here, to the dismay of both of us, her voice shakes. Angrily she roots in a pocket and blows her nose into a tissue.
“Sure you wouldn’t like some tea, dear?”
I hang over the sofa, longing to touch her, but not daring to. There are one or two white threads in her dark hair I’ve not seen before.
“No, don’t bother,” she says curtly.
“Well, why don’t you stretch out here and have a little doze. Maybe that –”
The door buzzer sounds, and when I answer it, Bernice herself stands revealed – a small, sallow, youngish woman in a coat horridly befurred in fluffy blue at neck, wrist and hem. With her receding chin and large, anxious eyes, she looks rather like a goldfish. I have no trouble at all understanding why the attentions of the Volvo man dazzle her.
“How are you, Mrs. Hill?” She has a way of speaking on an indrawn breath, so everything she says has an air of uncertainty and diffidence. “You okay, Marion?” she murmurs. “I brought you over some codeine.”
“Thanks. You’re a bit late,” says Marion, without opening her eyes.
“Well
, I’ll stick around for a bit, if you like.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I might as well get along home, then,” I say brightly into the ensuing silence. “Before the rush hour starts. You’ll be all right now, dear. The rest of those pills are in the bathroom, if you need them.”
As I pull on my coat, something rattles in the pocket. It is the bottle of capsules from Sebastian’s room. I take it over to Bernice who is flipping through the latest Maclean’s while Marion appears to doze. “Can you tell me what these are, by any chance? There’s no label, as you see.”
She breaks open one of the capsules and first sniffs, then tastes the powder inside. Then she says in her half-audible voice, “Nembutal. Sleeping pills. Sometimes pharmacists just slip the label inside. Bad idea; they get lost.”
“Yes, I see. Thanks.”
That evening as I sit knitting and turning over recent events in my mind, Prince Charles drops in – something he has not done for some time. He lounges in the big chair, legs stretched out, looking (for him) almost relaxed.
“Haven’t seen much of Your Highness recently,” I remark.
“Well, three’s a crowd, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” I admit placidly.
“One way and another, your time is pretty fully occupied these days. True, you only have one gentleman caller these days, but twice a week is going it, rather, with the Rev. Of course, with Cuthbert –”
“Let’s change the subject, Sir. I could use some advice, now you’re here.”
“Whatever about, if not this odd entanglement?”
“About Sebastian.”
“Ah. Quite another kettle of fish, then.”
“The thing is, I don’t know what to do. That is, I do know, but I’m too scared to do it.”
“Surely there’s no call for you to do anything whatsoever about Sebastian. He’s not related to you. You haven’t even known him long.”
“That doesn’t matter. He is related to me, in a way. In that I’m going to be old myself before long, and also in that we like each other a lot.”
“Now let’s not get too fanciful here,” Charles says with some severity. “The man has an attentive daughter, son-in-law and grandson. Come to that, after living in Toronto for fifty-odd years, he must have dozens of friends you’ve never met. Why on earth do you imagine it’s up to you to look after him?”
A Serious Widow Page 18
