A Temporary Life, page 14
‘What sort of stress?’
‘She’s such a sensitive girl,’ he says.
It’s as if sensitivity, like diabetes, is invariably a nuisance in a case like this.
‘She takes so many things to heart. These wars she’s always on about. And famine. And as for women’s rights.’ He shakes his head.
I wait.
‘What’s the solution, then?’ I ask.
‘I thought a week-end at home, with you.’ He looks across. ‘We’ve changed her pills. The ones I can give you she shouldn’t keep herself. You could have them in your pocket or somewhere, normally, where she wouldn’t look.’
‘Isn’t it better to tell her where they are?’
‘I’ll leave that up to you.’
He picks his nose; his head, as a consequence of this action, turns slowly to one side.
His eyes, however, are gazing at the desk, at a set of papers across which is written not Yvonne’s name but that of someone else.
He looks across. ‘You could have her report back on Monday morning. If you have any trouble just give a ring; or if you get into difficulties,’ he says, ‘you could bring her back. The change, in any case, will do her good. What sort of house have you got?’
‘A flat.’
‘It’s where you were living before?’
I shake my head.
‘As long as there’s room to sleep,’ he says.
‘I’ll pick her up on Friday, then.’
‘I’ll tell them about the pills,’ he says.
As I go to the door he calls across.
‘It might be better if she didn’t go home. To her mother’s home, that is,’ he says.
I stand by the door and gaze across.
‘I’ll try and bear it in mind,’ I say.
‘And maybe next week we can see how she is.’
He doesn’t look up as I close the door.
There’s a row of other figures on the chairs outside. The nurse calls a name: a woman rises. Small, grey-haired, her head on her chest, she shuffles over towards the door.
‘If Doctor Lennox wants to see you again,’ she says, ‘he’ll let you know. Otherwise, for any information about a patient, you can ask downstairs.’
I go through the door to the corridor outside.
Steps lead down to the gleaming, glass-covered hall. There’s a man sitting there with his back to the wall. He doesn’t look up.
I go to the ward.
Yvonne is sitting in the dining-room, her hands in her lap, her head bowed. On the table beside her is a glass of milk.
She must have heard me in the corridor: as the door swings back she’s looking up, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright. Evidently it’s the news of her release she’s been waiting for.
‘Did you see him, then?’
Her hands are clenched; the eyes, like those of a child, have opened wide.
‘He says you could come home for a week-end, then.’
‘Home?’
‘To the place I’ve got.’
‘For only two days.’
‘Three nights. There’s Friday, you see, as well.’
She lowers her head.
‘Don’t you fancy coming out?’
‘For only two days? It’s a sort of test.’
‘You could always walk out and never come back.’
‘They’d only have me certified,’ she says. ‘What’s the point if I haven’t been cured?’
A nurse in the kitchen is washing cups. Behind her head is a wooden rack: plates and pans are arranged in rows. A cloud of steam obscures her head.
‘Shall we go for a walk?’
‘I’m fed up of walking here,’ she says.
‘We could go in the lounge.’
‘They’re watching television there,’ she says.
She seems much better; clearer in her mind, depressed.
A small, white-haired woman, wearing what appears to be a sailor’s hat, has come into the room. She smiles at Yvonne then looks at me.
‘This is Peggy,’ Yvonne has said.
I shake her hand.
The woman’s face is round and red, the eyes light blue, and narrowed, shielded above and below by thick white lashes.
‘And how’s Yvonne today?’ she says.
‘I’m out for the week-end,’ Yvonne has said.
‘What did I tell you?’ the woman says. ‘If you’re good to them they’re good to you.’
‘Peggy’s been in six times,’ Yvonne has said.
‘Seven,’ the woman says. ‘This is my seventh,’ she adds to me.
‘She only lives across the road.’
‘My daughter lives across the road,’ the woman says. She looks at me. ‘They have such busy lives,’ she adds. ‘Her husband’s a greengrocer. They’ve to be up at five.’
The hat she wears has a shiny neb, with the crest of an anchor and a piece of rope embroidered in yellow and white above. Her dress is blue and patterned with flowers.
‘She’s always getting me into trouble,’ Yvonne has said.
‘Not me,’ the woman says. She turns aside.
‘She’s always tearing up notices,’ Yvonne has said. ‘And bits of paper.’
‘I don’t tear anything up,’ the woman says.
‘And puts them in my locker.’
‘Now, my dear, don’t exaggerate.’ The woman smiles.
‘Notices like, “No Entry”, “Don’t smoke in here”.’
‘They don’t allow smoking in some of the wards,’ the woman says. She looks at me. ‘I’ve seen them. They’re very good to us in here.’
‘And when she’s had her lunch she sometimes puts her plate inside my locker.’
‘Honestly, how you exaggerate.’ The woman smiles.
‘But she gives me cigarettes, as well.’
‘Oh, I don’t smoke much,’ the woman says.
‘And buys me cups of tea.’
‘I like to see people happy,’ the woman says.
‘She’s been in here six months.’
‘It’s nearer five.’
‘I thought it was six.’
‘By Christmas-time, I suppose it will. Be six months here, I mean,’ she says.
‘We’re just going for a walk,’ Yvonne has said.
‘Oh, I like going walks,’ the woman says.
‘I’m going with my husband,’ Yvonne has said.
She puts her arm in mine.
The nurse in the kitchen has raised her head: she lifts the window, smiling, then calls, ‘Mrs Kennedy: it’s time for your pill.’
‘I’ve had enough pills today,’ the woman says.
‘We’ll find something nice to go with it,’ the nurse has said.
‘It’s always something nice.’ She smiles. ‘They look after you here,’ she adds, ‘so well.’
We go out to the drive.
It’s cold. A wind blows the few surviving leaves along the ground. At one side of the drive a gardener clips a hedge; a man with a large head and protruding eyes is picking up the twigs.
‘My mother’s coming today.’
‘I know.’
‘She usually comes in time for tea.’
‘I rang up Lennox: it was the only time he had.’
‘He’s very busy.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘He works sixteen hours a day.’
‘He told you that?’
‘He told me it,’ she says, ‘the other day.’
‘He picks his nose.’
‘I’ve never noticed that.’
We’ve turned from the empty gates and are walking down the drive to the opposite end.
‘Aren’t you teaching today?’
I shake my head.
After some hesitation she takes my hand. Her beret, pulled down, obscures her eyes.
With her other hand, stooping, she pulls up the collar of her coat.
‘What made you ring him?’
‘I was tired of waiting.’
‘Was he mad that you came?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
Other figures, like ghosts, move off beneath the trees.
‘I bet he was angry.’
‘I hope he was.’
She glances across.
‘Better some feeling,’ I say, ‘than none at all.’
‘He’s very concerned.’
‘I’m sure he is.’
‘It’s a rotten job.’ She gestures round. ‘This all day.’
‘For sixteen hours.’
‘He’s very kind.’
‘They always are.’
‘Don’t you believe he helps?’
‘I believe he tries.’
‘Peggy’s family, you know, have let her down.’
‘How’s that?’
‘They live down the road, but they never come. If she’d somewhere to go they’d let her out.’
‘Do you want her to live with you?’
Her hand, momentarily, has tightened in mine.
‘I thought that she might. She’s ever so good.’
‘Another lost cause.’
‘When they let me out.’
‘She’s seventy, or over.’
‘She’s sixty-four.’
‘Your mother won’t like it.’
‘I can’t see why not.’
‘She lives on her own.’
‘We could have them both.’
The trees to our right have been replaced by a shrubbery; to our left, beyond a hedge, the playing-field ends abruptly against the back-yards of a row of houses. Immediately ahead, the tarmac surface of the drive fades out into a clayey track. One side turns off towards a compost-heap. A man is standing there, with a fork, gazing back, abstractly, the way we’ve come.
‘I’ve to live with two old ladies, as well as support them both,’ I say.
‘They have a pension.’
‘Two weeks with them and you’ll be back inside.’
‘You think I would?’
She releases my hand.
‘If I don’t care for them,’ she says, ‘who would?’
‘They can care for themselves,’ I tell her.
‘They’re both too old.’
I wonder, in fact, if it isn’t her mother’s idea; though typical at one time of Yvonne, after her experience here she’d hardly think of it herself. It would be like taking a piece of the place back home.
‘Lennox isn’t keen on your mother,’ I say.
‘Why not?’ she says.
She seems alarmed.
‘He puts her in the same class,’ I tell her, ‘as Vietnam, China, the poor in India. And women who’ve been displaced throughout their lives by men.’
‘If no one dealt with the world’s suffering what point would there be in living?’ she says.
We’ve had this argument, it seems, before; on the night before she was admitted she’d lain in a chair, weeping, before her the photograph of a child half-starved to death in some West African village.
‘I deal with it,’ she says, ‘in the only way I can.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘With the individuals, Colin,’ she adds, ‘I can see around me.’
She’s begun to cry. There’s something frightening about her grief. It’s like someone looking in a mirror. ‘If I can weep: I must be real.’
The clayey track has petered out. It runs off to a grass embankment on either side. On top of the embankment is a wooden seat.
She climbs towards it, her legs thrust out, her hands pushed down, fiercely, into the pockets of her coat.
By the time I reach her the crying’s stopped.
‘What else did Lennox say?’
‘He thinks your concern is too abstracted.’
‘I can’t see anything abstract about my mother. Nor about Peggy, either,’ she says.
She sits on the bench.
‘They’re all lost causes. To do with things, in the end, you can’t affect.’
‘I can affect my mother. And Peggy too, if I had the chance.’
‘They’re things that are finished. You need something new.’
‘I had a new life. It never got born.’
‘You’ve a life of your own. You could start that as well.’
‘Why start a new life, when the old life’s as bad as it is?’
She holds her head.
‘I’ve a terrible headache,’ she says. ‘And I’ve just had a pill.’
We say nothing further. I sit by her side.
Below us the embankment runs down to a tall brick wall, old, buckled, streaked with salt. Beyond, a ploughed field runs off towards the river. The land’s been flooded the other side; stretches of water reflect the lightness of the sky. On a low knoll, across the river, the first buildings of the town begin.
‘I’m surprised he agreed to me going out.’
Her hands, clenched, she rests them in her lap.
‘It’s to get you away from Peggy. You feed off her, you know, not the other way about.’
‘I don’t feed off anyone,’ she says. ‘And she, I know, doesn’t feed off me.’
A train, on a low embankment across the river, lets out a two-tone wail.
I can see the carriages winding away across the valley; moments later comes their dull rumble as they cross a metal bridge.
‘You take refuge in these people,’ I tell her, ‘not they in you.’
‘I don’t take refuge in anyone,’ she says. She moves her hand. ‘What refuge have I ever had?’
‘You take refuge in ideas. In service, in selfishness; you take refuge, at times, in a place like this: abstract yourself from it, then feed yourself back into it, bit by bit.’
She holds her head.
‘My mother should be here quite soon.’
‘There’s another hour.’
‘She’s sometimes early. You can never tell.’
‘Do you want to come out at the week-end, then?’
‘If we’re going to quarrel, there’s not much point.’
‘I’ve said all I want to say,’ I tell her.
‘Peggy knows my mother, in any case,’ she says.
‘Forget her.’
‘How do you forget people’s loneliness?’ she says.
She looks across.
‘If I lived for myself I suppose I would.’
‘If you lived for yourself you wouldn’t be here.’
The wind, blowing freshly across the fields, tugs her coat. She holds up her head so that it blows across her face. There’s a degree of consciousness I’ve begun to like; she doesn’t mind feeling things, it seems.
‘I’ll come at seven.’
‘Seven?’
‘To take you home. I’ve to be at the college, you see, till then.’
I get up from the seat.
A man comes out at the end of the path; he pauses below us, rubs his hands, stares at his feet, then, bright-eyed, sets off back the way he’s come.
‘A woman got over the wall one night.’
She gestures off to the fields below.
‘She jumped in the river.’
‘Did they get her out?’
‘They found her next morning.’
She adds nothing else. Something of her earlier mood returns; a kind of aloofness, uncertain, discomposed.
‘Lennox doesn’t want you better.’
‘What does he want?’ she says.
‘To see you out. The symptoms gone, if nothing else.’
‘I suppose that’s as good as anything else.’
‘It’s what I’m counting on,’ I tell her.
‘If he says I can go, I’ll be content.’
‘You seem calmer today.’
‘I suppose I am.’
A flock of sea-gulls has risen from the flooded fields. They wheel in the wind, flung up, like bits of paper, drifting out across the river.
‘They let me in the kitchens the other day. Not the one in the ward; the one where they cook for the men,’ she says.
She strokes her thumb.
‘I baked a cake. You should see the ovens. There was room for ten.’
‘Have you been down again?’
She shakes her head.
‘They were busy the next time. I got in the way.’
It’s like waiting for a storm; beforehand, there’s the thrashing of trees, the crashing of branches, the groaning of timber: but the final holocaust you can’t imagine.
‘If I’d been a man I wouldn’t be like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘I wouldn’t care about anything,’ she says. ‘You can see them here. They’re different from the women. The men don’t care; they’re wrapped up in themselves. It’s their grief, it seems, or nothing. With the women, they’re always looking out. They care what some of the others feel.’
‘It can’t be true.’
‘But look at you. Whenever you’re threatened there’s no one else.’
‘You’re feeling better.’
‘I suppose I am.’
‘You know I’m right.’
‘You don’t know how to care.’
‘I care about you.’
‘But it’s caring about people you don’t have to care about that counts. Caring about me doesn’t cost you anything,’ she adds.
‘It costs me more than you imagine.’
‘Such as?’
‘I wouldn’t be where I am right now if it wasn’t for you.’
‘Here?’
‘At the college.’
‘What sort of freedom do you want?’
She holds her head.
‘You don’t have to sacrifice yourself,’ she says.
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you, love,’ I add.
She’s silent for a while. Across the valley, where the houses begin, a cloud of smoke has risen from a factory chimney. Black, bulbous, it’s slowly torn to pieces by the wind, the thin, fraying fragments sweeping out across the river.
The sea-gulls, as if in answer, have drifted down, gliding back to the other side then re-alighting on the flooded fields.
‘Do you think Lennox picks his nose quite consciously, as an indication that he’s busy?’
‘What?’
‘You’ve never seen him do it, then?’
‘He’s always been very kind to me,’ she says.
‘In that sense, I suppose, I could be right. He didn’t want to see me, I suspect, at all. This week-end, I suppose, is to fob me off.’
‘We better get back.’
‘For what?’
‘My mother’s coming.’
She gets up from the seat.
‘I can’t see at times,’ she adds, ‘what we have in common. You want to break things all the time; I only want to put the bits together.’
