‘My name is Janna Somers,’ I said.
‘You are perhaps a neighbour?’ she said, annoyed.
‘I have become fond of Mrs Fowler,’ I said; and at last this was right, it enabled her to let out an involuntary sigh of relief, because the categories were back in place.
‘Oh yes,’ she cried, ‘I do so agree, some of these old things, they are so lovable, so …’ But her face was saying that Maudie is far from lovable, rather a cantankerous old nuisance.
We were standing in that awful passage, with its greasy yellow walls where coal dust lay in films, the smell of cat from the coal cellar, the cracked and shaky door to the outer world. She already had her hand on the doorknob.
‘I drop in sometimes to Mrs Fowler,’ I said, ‘and I do what I can.’ I said it like this so she would understand I would not be relied upon to do her work for her.
She sighed again. ‘Well, luckily, she has to be rehoused soon.’
‘What! She doesn’t know that!’ I recognized my voice had the panic in it Maudie would feel, if she had heard.
‘Of course she knows. This place has been scheduled for years.’
‘But it belongs to some Greek or other.’
‘Oh no, it can’t do!’ she began decisively, and then I saw her rethink. Under her arm she had a file stuffed full. She hung her handbag on the doorknob, pulled out the file, opened it. A list of houses for demolition or reconstruction.
I already knew that she had made a mistake, and I wondered if she was going to admit it, or cover up. If she admitted it, I would give her full marks – for this was a contest between two professionals. We were in competition, not for Mrs Fowler – poor Maudie – but for who had authority. Although I had specifically repudiated authority.
A biro between her pretty lips, she frowned over the papers spread on her lifted knee while she stood on one leg.
‘Well, I’ll have to look into it,’ she said. And I knew that it would all be allowed to slide away. Oh, how well I know that look of hers, when someone has inwardly decided not to do anything while presenting an appearance of confident competence!
She was about to go out.
I said, ‘If I could persuade her, what Services is she entitled to?’
‘Home Help, of course. But we tried that before, and it didn’t work. A Good Neighbour, but she didn’t want one …’ She gave me a quick doubtful look, and went on. ‘She’s not entitled to Meals on Wheels, because she can manage and we are so pressed …’
‘She’s over ninety,’ I said.
‘So are many others!’
‘But you’ll arrange for the nurse to come in?’
‘But she says she doesn’t want one. We can’t force ourselves on them. They have to co-operate!’ This triumphantly, she had scored a point.
She bounded up the steps and into a red Escort, and waved to me as she went off. Pleased to be rid of me. A bright smile, and her body was saying, These amateurs, what a nuisance!
I went remorsefully back to Maudie, because she had been discussed behind her back. She sat with her face averted and was silent.
At last: ‘What have you decided, then?’
‘Mrs Fowler, I do think you ought to have some of the Services, why not?’
Her head was trembling, and her face would have done for The Wicked Witch.
‘What I want is Meals on Wheels, but they won’t give me that.’
‘No Home Help?’
‘No. They sent me one. She said, Where’s your Hoover! Too good for a carpet sweeper. And sat here drinking my tea and eating my biscuits. And when I sent her shopping, she couldn’t be bothered to take an extra step to save a penny, she’d pay anything, I could shop cheaper than she, so I told her not to come back.’
‘Well, anyway …’ And I heard there was a different note in my voice. For I had been quite ashamed, watching Hermione, seeing myself, all that pretty flattering charm, as if she had – I had! – an eye directed at the performance: how well I am doing it! How attractive and kind I am … I was fighting to keep that note out of my voice, to be direct and simple. ‘Anyway, I think you should think about taking what is available. And to start with, there’s the nurse every morning, while you don’t feel well.’
‘Why should I need a nurse?’ she inquired, her face averted.
This meant, Why, when you are coming in to me twice a day? And, too, But why should you come in, it’s not your job. And, most strongly, Please, please.
If I were with someone like Hermione, my husband, Joyce, Sister Georgie, I would say, ‘What an emotional blackmailer, you aren’t going to get away with that.’ The fine nose of our kind for advantage, taken or given.
By the time I left I had promised I would continue to go in morning and evening. And that I would ring up ‘them’ saying she did not want a nurse. And when we said goodbye she was cold and angry, frantic because of her helplessness, because she knew she should not expect so much of me, and because …
And now I am sitting here, feeling quite wild myself, trapped is what I’m feeling. And I have been all evening in the bath, thinking.
About what I really care about. My life, my real life, is in the office, is at work. Because I have been working since I was nineteen, and always for the same magazine, I’ve taken it for granted, have not seen that this is my life. I was with the magazine in its old format, have been part of three changes, and the second of these I could say was partly because of me. Joyce and I made it all happen. I have been there longer than she has: for she came in as Production Manager, mid-sixties, when I had already been there fifteen or twenty years, working my way through all the departments. If there is one person in that magazine who can be said to be Lilith, it’s me.
And yet I take it all for granted. And I am not going to jeopardize what I really care about for the sake of Maudie Fowler. I shall go to Munich, not for two days, as I said today, but for the usual four, and I shall tell her she must say yes to the nurse.
Friday – in Munich.
Went in to Maudie this morning. She in her chair, staring at a cold grate, inside a carapace of black rags. I fetched her coal, made her tea, fed the cat. She seemed to be cold, yet with the glitter of fever. She was coughing and coughing.
I said to her, ‘Mrs Fowler, I am going to Munich and I shall be away four days.’ No response at all. I said, ‘Mrs Fowler, I have to go. But I am going to ring up Hermione Whitfield and say you must have a nurse. Just till I come back.’ She went on staring into the cold grate. So I began to lay the fire – but did not know how, and she forced herself up out of her warm nest and slowly, slowly put in bits of paper, bits of wood, a fire-lighter, built up the fire. I looked around – no newspaper, no more fire-lighters, nothing.
I went out to the shop, and on the way back saw that there was a skip in the road outside her door, and there were plenty of little slats of wood, old laths from the demolished walls – she had been collecting these to start her fire. Conscious of how I must look, in all my smart gear, I filled a carrier bag with these bits of wood. While I was doing this, I chanced to glance up and saw that I was being observed from various windows. Old faces, old ladies. But I did not have time to take anything in, but rushed down with the wood and the groceries. She was again in her listless pose in front of the now roaring fire.
I did not know whether a nurse would build a fire.
I asked, ‘Will a nurse make up a fire for you?’
She did not answer. I was getting angry. And was as distressed as she. The whole situation was absurd. And yet it could not be any other way.
When I stood up to leave I said, ‘I am going to ring up and ask for a nurse and please don’t send the nurse away.’
‘I don’t want any nurse.’
I stood there, worried because I was late, and it was Conference day and I’ve never ever been late. And worried about her. And angry. And resentful. And yet she tugged at me, I wanted to take that dirty old bundle into my arms and hug her. I wanted to slap her and shake her.
‘What is all this about hospital,’ I asked, ‘what? You’d think you were being threatened with … what is so terrible about it? Have you ever been there?’
‘Yes, two winters ago. Christmas.’
‘And?’
