I'm on the train!

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘And the nurses aren’t keen either. They’re an infection-risk, apparently – you know, lethal germs breeding in the flower-water. Although they’d be lucky to get any water here, let alone a proper vase. The nurses are rushed off their feet.’

  ‘So I noticed,’ she said, sarcastic now herself, yet hating the fact they were already bickering. How did other sisters manage to be companionable and close, while she and Marion had fought for almost sixty years?

  ‘Eileen, I can’t believe I actually dozed off! I’ve barely slept a wink all the time I’ve been here, then, when you turn up, after years and years of deliberately avoiding me, I’m bloody dead to the world!’

  Eileen bit back a retort. ‘Deliberately avoiding’ was really rather rich. Marion had brought her isolation on herself. Fortunately, they were interrupted by the appearance of a nurse, wheeling some machine or other, which she parked beside the bed. Without a word to either of them, she proceeded to take Marion’s blood-pressure and temperature; scrawled some figures on the chart, then trundled off as quickly as she’d come.

  Eileen raised her eyebrows. ‘They’re not exactly chatty here.’

  ‘You should see the consultant! Even if he actually deigns to speak, I can’t understand a word he says. I’ve nothing against foreigners. I’d just like them to learn English, as well as medicine.’

  ‘Anyway, how are you?’ Eileen asked, ashamed to realize she hadn’t yet enquired.

  ‘Lousy. Either in pain, or all woozy from the drugs. But the worst thing is the lack of sleep. There’s so much racket, day and night – cleaners banging about, or patients crying out for help, or doctors rushing in to deal with some emergency. The minute I close my eyes, somebody or something wakes me up. It’s driving me insane!’

  ‘I’m sorry, honestly.’

  Another shrug. ‘Who cares?’

  ‘I do.’ It wasn’t a lie. She did care – always had – but she’d learned through painful experience that no one could help Marion – not she, or Harold, or their two now grown-up daughters; not even her mother, despite their combined, heroic efforts to improve the situation. After decades of contention, they had all been forced to conclude that there was nothing else any of them could do.

  She made herself reach down and clasp her sister’s hand. It, too, looked distressingly old, with distended veins and brown patches of discolouration. Was Marion hiding something – something sinister that would explain this accelerated ageing? Could the surgeon have found cancer in her womb – cancer that had already spread? The prospect of another funeral filled her with the deepest dread.

  Marion seemed uneasy with her hand held and, having wriggled it free, picked up the bouquet, instead, and thrust her nose against the roses. They were scentless, in fact, being out-of-season and forced. Nonetheless, Eileen thought resentfully, a word of thanks would surely be in order, but then gratitude had never been Marion’s strong point.

  ‘It was the infection that really loused things up. I mean, I was due to leave this dump two days ago, but that very morning, my temperature shot up. They found the wound was oozing – suppurating, they call it – so that put the bloody kibosh on any chance of going home.’

  Was Marion lying, she wondered; inventing an infection to conceal a cancerous tumour? But what would be the point? Besides, she had never spared her family any details of her earlier traumas: the abortion; the disastrous overdose; the near-fatal accident. (Only Marion would be so reckless as to borrow some madcap’s Harley-Davidson and do a ton down the motorway, just for the sheer hell of it.) On the other hand, her sister was a practised liar, as if in deliberate contravention of their mother’s firm belief that even the whitest of white lies was wrong. Indeed, she herself adhered to the same strict standards and never lied, on principle.

  ‘So when are they thinking of discharging you?’ She had to raise her voice above the disturbance from the adjoining bed. An entire medical team had just breezed in and, although they had drawn the floral curtains round the bed, their remarks and observations were clearly audible – not to mention disconcerting.

  Marion shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Do you live nearby?’ Shaming that she didn’t know her only sibling’s address. But then Marion changed her whereabouts as often as most people changed their clothes.

  ‘Not far. I found this crummy bedsit, about six months ago, above a shop in Sydenham. There’s barely room for me, let alone for visitors. Which is why I didn’t invite you to stay.’

  Eileen was hard pressed to reply. She and Harold owned a detached, four-bedroomed house in an attractive part of Harrogate, with extensive gardens back and front. And their daughters, too, lived in salubrious surroundings, having found themselves good jobs and solvent spouses. Marion, however, had never succeeded in meeting what their mother called ‘good husband material’. Instead, she had shacked up with a succession of highly unsuitable men, who either dumped her, or betrayed her, or took advantage of her. As for having children, she had never shown the slightest maternal instinct and, anyway, none of the ne’er-do-wells she seemed to attract possessed even rudimentary parenting skills.

  ‘I feel really gutted about the hysterectomy,’ Marion remarked, as if tuning in to her thoughts. ‘I’ve never used my fucking womb and now it’s been ripped out. I might as well as have never had it in the first place – or all those painful periods every sodding month.’

  Eileen winced at the swear-words. Swearing was like lying: unnecessary, objectionable and wrong. ‘But I thought you didn’t want children?’ she said, a shade impatiently.

  ‘Eileen, you haven’t a clue! Of course I wanted kids, but it didn’t happen, did it? Oh, I know I had an abortion, but very much against my will.’

  ‘That wasn’t the impression you gave.’

  ‘Look, I had to get rid of it – there wasn’t any choice. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t find the whole thing really harrowing. In fact, I had these ghastly nightmares for ages afterwards. I’d be holding a mangled foetus in my arms, but wrapped in a proper baby’s shawl and even wearing bootees, would you believe!’

  Eileen grimaced in distaste. She and Harold were vehemently pro-life. Would she ever know if her sister really wanted that child, or whether she was lying again?

  ‘It’s OK for you, with Chloe and Samantha, not to mention a live-in husband to support them. And your pampered little darlings now have kids and husbands of their own, yet Harold still waits on you hand and foot!’

  ‘He doesn’t. Don’t be silly.’

  ‘He pays all the bills, though, doesn’t he? You haven’t worked for bloody years. I have to work, to pay the rent. And the only job I could find at my age is waitressing in a seedy caff.’

  Eileen bit her lip. Whatever irritation Marion had caused, no one could deny that the cards had been stacked against her, right from birth. A sickly, plain and backward child, she had only seemed to emphasize the contrast with the elder sister’s blooming health, pretty face and creditable school performance. And, of course, she had been the favourite; not only with her mother, but with all the other relatives. But hadn’t she earned that position by being always caring and responsible; supporting her widowed mother; following the path of duty and conformity, while Marion ran riot? Indeed, once she’d reached her early teens, she had acted almost like her mother’s husband; the pair of them trying – and failing lamentably – to control their obstreperous child, and never giving up until Marion was middle-aged and, by then, clearly hell-bent on self-destruction.

  She glanced up at the noise of the tea-trolley being trundled along the ward. The obese black orderly in charge of it was all but bursting the seams of her uniform, but at least she had a radiant smile. Smiles seemed rare among the staff here.

  ‘Tea, dear?’ she asked Marion, beaming at them both.

  ‘Yes, please. Two sugars. And could you wangle a cup for my sister?’

  ‘Sorry, dear, I’d love to, but only patients get the tea.’

  At St Winifred’s, each and e
very visitor had been offered a tray of tea, with a proper teapot and milk jug and decent floral china. Marion’s plain white cup was stained and didn’t even match its saucer.

  ‘Anyway,’ Marion said, taking a tentative sip, as if expecting the tea to poison her, ‘that’s enough about me. I didn’t drag you all this way to talk about my fucking womb. I want to discuss Deidre.’

  Eileen felt the usual surge of irritation at that disrespectful ‘Deidre’. From the age of twelve, Marion had refused to call their mother ‘Mummy’, yet for a child to use its parent’s Christian name seemed deplorably casual, not to say bizarre.

  ‘I’m sorry I missed the funeral.’

  ‘Well, that was hardly your fault. Didn’t you say you had your operation the very day she died?’

  ‘Yeah. Bad timing!’

  Would you have come anyway, Eileen refrained from asking. Privately, she suspected that had Marion been in the rudest of health, she would still have failed to show up. As for her helping with the arrangements, that would require a miracle. She was the one who always dealt with the deaths, whether uncles, aunts, grandparents or elderly family friends, while Marion remained conspicuous by her absence. In fact, she had every right to feel aggrieved. Now officially a pensioner, it was sometimes hard to summon up her former energy and organizational powers.

  ‘I did go to the hospital chapel, though, just before my op, to say a prayer for her.’

  Eileen looked up in surprise. ‘I didn’t know you were religious.’

  ‘Praying’s nothing to do with religion.’

  ‘What’s it to do with, then?’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s a form of energy that you can beam towards a person you want to help.’

  ‘Well, you couldn’t do much to help Mummy – not when she was already dead.’

  ‘How can you be so sure? It might have eased her passage to another life.’

  ‘So you believe in eternal life now, do you?’ This was getting more and more absurd. Marion had long ago rebelled against religion; refused to go to church; refused even to attend her and Harold’s wedding; claiming the marriage service was a sham and the vicar a self-serving ponce. But, of course, if she’d just been told she had terminal cancer, she might have changed her tune and be clutching at the only form of salvation now on offer.

  ‘Look, it may sound weird to you, Eileen, but I feel quite cut up about Deidre – you know, not saying goodbye or anything.’

  Well, you had plenty of chances these last few years. Again, Eileen didn’t speak her mind, partly because her sister looked so ill: dark purplish circles etched beneath her eyes and a worryingly grey tinge to her complexion.

  ‘She never knew me – that was the trouble. And, actually, she didn’t want to. I think she was almost scared.’

  ‘Scared?’

  ‘Yes, of what I might reveal. The last time we met, which I remember clearly was in April 2005, she was already eighty-two and I felt this desperate need to tell her who I was – you know – what makes me tick, all that sort of stuff, before she was dead and gone. “Deidre,” I said, “I might as well be a total stranger for all you know about my life. So why don’t we sit down together and I’ll give you some idea of how I see things?” And, can you believe, she refused point blank? I think she was terrified of discovering I was a hardened heroin addict, or worked in a brothel, or something!’

  ‘Marion, that’s crazy! Mummy would never even have heard of heroin addicts.’

  ‘Yes, she only felt at ease among her own kind – that’s the very point I’m trying to make. She deliberately confined herself to a narrow segment of society – straitlaced and conservative and all upholding the same bourgeois standards. Even the films and plays she chose to see had to be safe and sanitized – no drugs, no sex, no sink estates, nothing the slightest bit subversive. If anyone put forward an even mildly radical view, she’d feel threatened and run a mile. She didn’t just lack soul; she lacked any curiosity about how other people live, even her own flesh and blood. I can’t understand that, Eileen – condemning nine-tenths of the human race because they don’t sign up to monogamy and safe mortgages, or save for Saga cruises or go to flower-arrangement classes.’

  Eileen flushed. She and Harold had thoroughly enjoyed last year’s Saga cruise and what, in heaven’s name, was wrong with flower-arrangement? In fact, she longed to find a decent vase and get to work on the bouquet.

  ‘OK, she can live like that, if she wants, but why inflict those things on me?’

  ‘She didn’t, Marion. That’s totally unfair.’

  ‘Look, when I refused to toe the line, she more or less disowned me. Take the way she used to condemn me as “promiscuous”, if I shagged a bloke I didn’t know that well. She couldn’t see that sex is actually quite a useful way to find out more about someone – what they’re really like beneath the mask.’

  Eileen glanced nervously around. Marion’s voice could carry and the Indian patient opposite was already glancing in their direction.

  ‘I mean, I’ve slept with guys I later realized I didn’t even like. And it was the sex itself that showed me they were bloody selfish, or plain violent, or whatever. And several didn’t have a clue about how women’s bodies work. But I don’t regret it in the slightest because…. Hell! You don’t want to hear all this. Let’s get back to Deidre. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I always hoped she’d come to see things differently and stop judging me so harshly as a dropout and a slut. I wanted her to understand that I was genuinely adrift and most of the mistakes I made were just attempts to sort out my life. I was stupid enough to think that, sooner or later, she’d agree to forgive and forget, and we could wipe the slate clean and even get close, at last. And then she has to go and die when I’m lying on the operating table, two-hundred miles away! So now it’s too fucking late. Everything’s too late – a husband, kids, a decent job … I’ve missed the boat all round, Sis.’

  Sis! A word Marion hadn’t used since they were little, and surely a term of affection. But, as she opened her mouth to say something more amenable herself, she was interrupted by the medicos, who were just leaving the neighbouring bed and making their rackety way back along the ward.

  It was Marion who spoke, in fact, as she watched the troupe disappear. ‘It’s even too late for sex. Look at that little lot – testosterone on legs! But none of them would touch me with a bargepole, not even the old buffer of a consultant. I’m way past my sell-by date.’

  Eileen reflected on the fact that, despite being five years older than Marion, and with a husband in his seventies, she and Harold still had sex – gentle, tepid, unexciting sex, although latterly he’d been having trouble maintaining an erection. Had he ever really known how women’s bodies worked, she couldn’t help but wonder, aware that such a speculation was disloyal and probably dangerous? Yet, sometimes, deep, deep down, she had envied Marion all those different men; the tempestuous one-night stands; even just her sister’s vast experience. What did she mean by ‘plain violent’, for instance? Had she been tied up, whipped or – God forbid – semi-raped? Her mind refused to go there. The imaginative leap was too great, since she herself had slept with one man only, in her entire adult life: her lawful, wedded husband. Normally, she saw that as a virtue, yet occasionally and secretly, she had allowed herself to fantasize about the sort of men Marion described, only to feel immediate guilt.

  It was time to change the subject, though, if only for the other patients’ sake. Now that the doctors had left, the woman in the adjoining bed could easily listen in, while the patient opposite seemed to have nothing better to do than watch them with a disapproving air. ‘Look, Marion, is there anything you need? The hospital shop is really rather good, so I can easily pop down there and buy you some fruit, or orange juice, or a few magazines to read.’

  ‘I loathe magazines – women’s mags especially. They’re so trivial they make me puke, as if all us women care about is clothes and make-up and orgasms. What about our sodding m
inds? But I keep going off the point. Listen, Eileen – this is really important. Deidre hasn’t spoken to me for five and three-quarter years, but surely she must have thought about me sometimes?’

  ‘Of course.’ No mother could forget her child. Besides, she and Deidre had never failed to discuss the burden they’d shared for decades: the intractable problem of Marion.

  ‘OK, prove it! What I need to know is did she actually mention me in the twenty-four hours between her heart attack and her death?’

  Eileen cast her mind back. Their mother had been conscious, and surprisingly compos mentis, and they had spoken, quite extensively. But, no, Marion hadn’t featured in any of the conversations. As she opened her mouth to say so, she noticed the expression on her sister’s face: anguished, almost pleading; a prisoner begging for reprieve.

  ‘Er, let me think,’ she prevaricated. ‘Of course, we didn’t have much time together and—’

  ‘But you told me on the phone that the two of you had a really good long chat. And you were amazed how lucid she was, despite all the drugs and stuff.’

  Eileen cursed herself for having mentioned that communication. But then it had never crossed her mind that Marion would care a jot whether their mother had remembered her or not. She was relieved to see a nurse approaching. Perhaps her sister would be wheeled away for some scan or test or procedure, allowing them to evade the issue.

  ‘How’s the pain?’ the girl asked – an Asiatic, this time, pretty and petite.

  ‘Awful! Can I have more painkillers?’

  The nurse consulted the chart at the foot of Marion’s bed. ‘Sorry, it’s only three hours since the last lot, so you’re not due for any more yet. But I’ll come back in an hour, OK?’

  With a shrug of resignation, Marion returned to the thorny subject. ‘For Christ’s sake, Eileen, she only had us two kids, not a bloody tribe. You were there at the end; I, unfortunately, wasn’t. And, since you say she hadn’t lost her marbles, how could she have forgotten me entirely?’