by David Nobbs
‘I know she can,’ said Victoria. Kate could feel Victoria’s innocent breath close to her ear. ‘You’re a hundred tomorrow, Great-granny,’ she whispered. ‘There’ll be a cake, and jelly, and buns. There’ll be a hundred candles on the cake. It’ll have to be a big cake. I baked a cake but it wasn’t big enough for a hundred candles. I ate it too. It was horrid. I know you’re only pretending, cos I like pretending too and Mummy says I’m like you.’
‘Hush, Victoria, that’s enough,’ said Elizabeth.
Kate could just feel Victoria’s little hand in hers, several hundred miles away across hills and valleys though it was.
What times you will live through, Victoria. In your lifetime you will know whether this civilisation will become the first civilisation not to die. You will know whether this civilisation will destroy not only itself but also the planet, so that there can never be any civilisation again. In your lifetime man will either master the machines he has created or be mastered by them. What changes I have lived through, but they will be as nothing compared to the changes you will live through, for that is the nature of change. I don’t know whether I envy you your youth or pity you for it, but I know this, enjoy it to the full, live life to the full, and remain as lovely to other people as you are now. Bye-bye, Victoria. I pass the baton.
‘Squeeze my hand if you can hear me, Great-granny,’ piped Victoria.
Kate squeezed Victoria’s hand.
‘She squeezed my hand, Granny,’ said Victoria excitedly.
‘Don’t be silly, Victoria. You’re being silly now.’
‘I aren’t. She did.’
‘ “I’m not. She did.”’
‘There you are. I told you she did.’
‘She’s crying. You’ve made her cry, you naughty girl.’
Oh Lord, Elizabeth, don’t be so crass. Why do you always have to be so crass?
When Elizabeth bent down to kiss her goodbye, and held Kate’s hand, Kate squeezed it, as hard as she could, which wasn’t very hard. She heard Elizabeth gasp. Then Elizabeth squeezed her hand.
‘Come on, darling,’ Elizabeth said to Victoria. ‘Let’s buy you a treat.’
‘Aren’t I naughty any more?’ piped Victoria.
‘No, darling. You aren’t naughty any more.’
Kate heard mumbling. It was Delilah and Lily Stannidge talking to each other. She couldn’t make out the words any more, they were so far away.
Squeak squeak. A new arrival, a woman about whom Kate would never know anything. Forget all that. It’s over.
She was just conscious of the arrival of her sons. What was Nigel thinking, she wondered, now that he knew that she knew? Was he dreading that her eyes would open to accuse him again? They wouldn’t, of course. She hadn’t the energy any more. Her eyes would never open again.
Something was worrying her. What was it? Oh yes. They were having a party for her hundredth birthday tomorrow. She’d get a card from the Queen. ‘Who’s a lucky girl, then? We are, aren’t we? Who’s got a cake with a hundred candles that says “100 not out”? We have. Oh, we are a lucky girl.’ Have to escape all that. She could hear music. Was the party beginning already? No, it was Morris dancers. She could hear them dancing. She could hear them slapping their sides. She wished they’d go away. She couldn’t think why they were there, slap slap, jump jump, jig jig, twit twit. She hadn’t enough bed. Dilys never left her enough bed. She wanted to be cross with Dilys, but she wasn’t allowed to be. There was something wrong with Dilys. She was faulty. Kate could hear clicking noises in her head. Why were there clicking noises in her . . . what’s-it? Must do something about that birthday party. Must avoid all that. One last big effort, Kate, you can do it. ‘Happy birthday to you.’ Couldn’t bear it. ‘Happy birthday, dear . . . dear . . . Dear who? She’d forgotten her . . . her . . . the thing they called you by. Words were running out. She found herself thinking, how do you think without words? How do animals think? How . . . how . . . who . . . what . . . and that was the last thing she ever thought.
Epilogue
She didn’t die just then. It isn’t as easy as that, dying.
Doctor Ramgobi had alerted Nigel, and they had all come prepared for a long evening and night. ‘Who’s a lucky lady to have such loving children? We are.’
Nigel, Timothy, Maurice and Elizabeth sat round their mother’s bed and listened to the clicking noises in her head and talked in whispers.
Clare and Terence sat in the day room, so as not to make the ward too crowded. They did a jigsaw to pass the time. It was a jigsaw of that great ocean liner, the Queen Mary. Nothing about Whetstone General Hospital was too modern. They found, to their great disappointment, that a piece of the sky was missing. It had been eaten, did they but know it, by a deranged chiropodist from Lewes, who had later complained that the canapés were wooden.
There was only one unseemly moment. Thin Helen asked Delilah if she wanted some Horlicks, and Delilah said, ‘No, ta, darling, this whore doesn’t lick any more,’ and roared with laughter, and then stopped in horror and said, ‘Oops. She’s dying, isn’t she? Sorry. It slipped me fucking mind.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Nigel stiffly. He did seem stiff and uneasy in his mother’s presence that night. We know why, you and I, but it might have been a bit puzzling to Timothy, Maurice and Elizabeth.
The barley-sugar night-light came on, and they sat round the bed in its strange glow. The clicking in Kate’s head stopped. The ward became very silent, as if to justify Timothy’s prose style.
At about twenty to twelve Kate’s breathing began to get slower and fainter.
‘Only twenty minutes to go,’ whispered Timothy. ‘You can do it.’
It’s doubtful if any of them could have said why it was still important for their mother to live to be a hundred. Maybe they would frame the death certificate.
Her breathing grew slower and slower, fainter and fainter, and just stopped. There was no death rattle, just silence. The lines on her face seemed to have melted away. She looked almost young again. Maurice it was who put his hand over his mother’s mouth and said, ‘I think she’s left us.’
It was two minutes to twelve. They stood round the bed, her four children, silent and shocked. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was. They shouldn’t have been shocked, but they were.
They had thought that all the women in the ward were sleeping, but it was not so.
Lily Stannidge, who had no idea that the person who had just died was her old history teacher, who had aroused in her, when she was Lily Gardner, the historical passion that had taken her to so many ancient sites with Swan Hellenic, said, in a hushed voice, ‘I’m sorry she died, of course, but it is rather exciting. I’ve never seen a burial at sea before.’
Delilah said, ‘I once saw a man die of excitement in the Cleopatra Club in Dudley.’
At midnight the nurse pulled a sheet over Kate’s head.
‘I must say I’m surprised,’ said Timothy. ‘I really felt the old girl’s will-power would see her through.’
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Epub ISBN: 9781407071398
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Published in the United Kingdom in 2001 by
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Copyright © David Nobbs 2000
This right of David Nobbs to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
First published in the United Kingdom in 2000 by William Heinemann
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ISBN 9780099414650
