This fine creature falling into your lap when you were sixty-two and looked it and felt it was no hardship. Jean just needed to get the hang of things, that was all. Lily was an orphan in every regard – apart from the embarrassing fact there were two parents extant. To say they were not up to the job was to mock the notion of employment. Eleanor, the mother, a walking catastrophe – her self-murdering zeal matched only by a talent for staying alive. The wolf lived permanently at her door without quite reaching the upper chambers. The father – a complete nothing – to the extent one didn’t know his name.
There was something about Lily going out into the world, a girl in a hoody with a basket in the forest, hem of her dress caught up in her fingertips, heart pried open so you could almost hear the pumping of her heroic (O positive!) blood type, urging her to receive life without judgement or grudges or speculation . . . Perhaps that was what was unbearable, the sense she would get mashed and pulped like all the other bright heroines, if Jean took her eye off her.
She hadn’t had such worries with her own child. Louisa wasn’t vulnerable she was solid, thoughtless, flushed-cheeked, curly of hair. Like a small red car in an Enid Blyton she was self-reliant, forward-moving. She was lucky and had a tendency to land on her feet, whereas Lily stepped through rooms on tiptoe, peering behind her for ghosts. Powered by whirrings of bright moral energy, a ripe determination to emerge unscathed – those were strong things – but was it enough?
The facts were sharp if not entirely clear. As luck would or wouldn’t have it, Lily had been brought up since late babyhood by Ruth, her grandmother. Seven weeks before her last breath Ruth asked Jean if she would take Lily on. They were not family but best friends of long-standing, colleagues at the coalface of the blackboard wiper, sober doler-outers of the detention baguette. Ruth’s voice struck an elaborately casual note, as one might ask, before a journey, if a neighbour could shake a hose at the sweet williams or put out and roll back the Wednesday bins. She spoke as though there was a possibility of a no, which there was not.
‘Sure,’ Jean said, matching Ruth in tone.
‘Sure? ’ the word was queried, found wanting, condemned.
‘It would be a great honour,’ Jean bowed.
‘Thank you.’
She promised Ruth, at the end, she would not let anything bad happen. ‘Not on my watch,’ Jean said. ‘No! Never! No way!’ Who in their right mind dished out such pronouncements? Frank Sinatra? Lily would thrive and Eleanor would stay alive. Jean rubber-stamped it. Had they actually shaken hands? But Jean’s night self, which was less staunch than her day self, wanted some backup, some heavies, some sentinels. So here she was going to sleep singing ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’. And sometimes ‘Those in Peril or at Sea’ to broaden its application.
*
‘I don’t want her to feel unentitled to mind things,’ Ruth was saying. She was propped up in the hospital bed, clipboard at the foot, clipboard at the head, as though the bed itself were conducting a thorough survey. Two winded pillows barely reached four inches thick. ‘Days not weeks,’ the doctor said, a certain shyness round the well-worn death sentence. Minding things was an entitlement, Jean pondered it. It was a step up from suffering; it was the belief your suffering was unjust. That you weren’t afraid to show you thought something of yourself. Very important. (Of course, some people made a blood sport out of minding everything – so dreary.)
‘That it wouldn’t destroy anyone if she thought now and then she had been dealt a cruel hand,’ Ruth spoke slowly but her diction was immaculate.
‘You have never been cruel.’
‘I know, but a start in life ought to be more solid.’
‘Yours wasn’t.’
‘Still. She may need at some point to allow herself to wail and flop a bit.’
‘These things can’t be forced.’
‘I don’t know. They can be accommodated.’
Oh. So I’m to accommodate the unspeakable things because you did not? Jean moved the words round her mouth with stealth. Instead, ‘She will need buffers. Mechanisms to hand that will help. But of course she may be that rare soul with the kind of hardware to weather tough things. In which case that tendency, that infrastructure, should be respected.’
‘Christ, Jean! Buffers? Infrastructure? You hate resilience. You think it’s a racket. That it’s what’s expected from those who aren’t treated well. They’ll put it on your headstone!
‘OK. God! You’re impossible!’
They both laughed.
‘Sorry,’ Ruth said.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ Jean said. ‘I suppose I want to tie things neatly in a bow.’
‘Well you can pack that in for a start.’
‘Understood.’
‘Isn’t it great we can still drive each other mad?’
‘I agree. I think it’s very authentic of us.’
Then – ‘How will she grieve me?’ Ruth asked.
What a question!
‘I wish I could slip away, so she wouldn’t notice. How could I wound her like this?’
‘It doesn’t work like that.’
‘I’ve let her down.’
‘I don’t see it that way.’
‘I do.’
Later when Ruth woke, Jean steadied herself. She had a speech prepared and practised in the visitor’s chair. Trial and error, a good deal of editing, a passable dress rehearsal with moving lips. ‘I’ve a good plan,’ she said. ‘Would you like me to say what I think we would –’
‘Please.’
‘Well, we will miss and mourn you together. We’ll celebrate you as we do our teeth and drink our morning tea. You’ll top and tail our days.’
‘But how will you actually –?’
It was evening now – a crescent moon, very still, in the corner of the window like a stamp. Ruth said it looked Parisian. One of the side lights in the ward was on the blink. It cast a queer throbbing intensity over the dangerous talk. A man in a blue boiler suit was up a ladder, fiddling away, quite merry.
Jean reeled off her list like a little poem. It was as though she was scaling a tall glass building, but she tried for a restful atmosphere. ‘We’ll speak of you every day. We’ll continue some of your favourite routines and make the food you made and read the books you loved. We’ll walk through London parks, marvelling at all the different greens. We will cook now and then from Elizabeth David although, as you know, I’m not big on her superior tone. We’ll get out letters and photographs of you on Sunday afternoons, if there’s nothing decent on TV. We’ll come and visit you to say hello or when we have news, good or bad, and we’ll sit on the bench and fill you in on what’s going on at school and in the world. What’s on special at the supermarket! And we’ll bring coffee and viennoiserie sometimes to where you rest and just sit and chat there, showering you with croissant crumbs. We might sing, if you can stomach it, I know you’re not a fan of my country and western side. We may suggest we have read more than we have to impress you, so you can discount twenty-five per cent of our claims. If I say I’ve learned Russian to read Chekhov in the original you can take it with a pinch of salt. We’ll laugh and we’ll have a cry, I might bring the travel backgammon in case boredom sets in. We will have cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches and slot plain crisps inside for the crunch factor. That do you?’
‘Oh oh oh!’ Ruth murmured. There was pleasure there. Strong pleasure, weakly expressed. Jean stood and leaned over the bedside. She held out her hand and stroked Ruth’s hair. She thought suddenly of babies’ hair, the way when their hair first came in it didn’t always look real.
‘Oh yes, and I forgot, we’ll plant snowdrop bulbs beside you; I’ll order a load of them when I get home. They should be up nicely by mid-Jan. And we can put in something more scented and frothy for the spring, Lily can choose it, but I’ll steer her away from yellow, if I may. Soft blues and lilacs would be more my –
‘And I will answer any questions that she has about her life, and your life. I’ll do it carefully, laying things out little by little. And I’ll wait to be asked, like we said.’
Jean exhaled and cast her eyes about the ward. It was one of the more difficult exams she had taken.
Ruth was beginning to look uneasy. Had she under-delivered? Had she over-? There was something crass in giving all the details. It was always better to preserve your mystery. Were there omissions that grated? Had she hoped for more sorrow in the delivery? Did she require mention of black garments – on a child? Jean put her hand gently to her mouth to convey she didn’t blame it. She wasn’t going down that road.
The sadness was spreading thickly between them now. Words couldn’t do anything, not really.
After school, Lily arrived at the hospital. She often took refuge in the lavatories on the ward, disappearing for ten minutes or so, the days in need of breaking up and brokering. Her face damp and glistening on her return gave Jean the idea that she splashed herself for courage, taking time to think and feel the things necessary to her emotional privacy. But one couldn’t know. It might have been the remnants of tears, or steps taken to hide or dilute them. She came back refreshed-looking in any case. She was professional in that way, not in the sense of being controlled or businesslike, but in knowing what she needed. She was respected by the hospital staff who looked her up and down with great approval. They addressed their comments to her in the main – family had a higher status to friends in a hospital setting – but she was only fifteen. There was a lozenge-shaped pink patch of dry skin under Lily’s chin, and she rubbed away at it without seeming to notice. It expressed a form of physical sympathy with Ruth’s state, Jean thought. A dab of Vaseline ought to do the trick. Perhaps when they got home she ought to – no, it would be better coming in the morning.
The doctor made his evening rounds, the tall, grand English one. His august look held both glamour and humility. ‘More like three or four days, now, I’m afraid.’ Then: ‘Less than a week, certainly.’ He lingered for some sort of civilised response. Jean rose to her feet, but she could not speak.
‘OK then. Fair enough,’ Lily murmured, nodding, meeting the doctor with a cool thin smile. That was incredible. The way she took it upon herself to lead them all into this new phase. Such maturity and authority. And if Lily could accept it, it meant they all could/must follow suit. So now it was just about how to colour in those precious hours. Just!
Little tableaux from the past bobbed about them all the time, marking the scene for future memory. When Lily was small, five or six, something difficult happened, Jean half remembered, to do with her mother, it always was, who had shown up in bad order, or more likely not shown up at all. There was some kind of ensuing episode or confrontation, and Ruth took it hard, which was unusual, and had to go to bed for a time. Jean was put in charge of taking Lily on an outing, but on being asked what she’d like, Lily thought she was being quizzed about a present, and had spoken, if it wasn’t too expensive, of a new nail varnish she fancied. The shade was called Sunflower Mist; the stockist the chemist next to the laundrette. With ceremony, not quite marching but almost, they went and bought it, took it to a bright cafe.
They ordered hot chocolates, not too sweet as Lily liked it, and she did them both with concentration, as good as a nail bar, pushing back Jean’s cuticles with an orange stick she brought from home, massaging the nail beds with the edges of the napkin, applying the colour with the tiny brush in three even strokes. The yellow had a greenish tinge, more Van Gogh’s chair than his sunflowers, the shade of Jean’s-Ex-Alan’s fingertips before he gave up smoking, Jean remarked. Still, Lily was thrilled. The atmosphere between them deepened. It was a powerful connection to have matching nails. Jean asked her if she felt OK, what with her mother coming round in a bad way or not coming when she had said she would or whatever it was that had gone awry – ‘It’s got to be tough to take’ – and Lily said, quite sensibly, ‘It’s cheered me down, Jean.’
Jean fell for her then. She reached for something outlandish such as, ‘From now on instead of Jean will you call me . . . Gigi?’ but it might have pissed Ruth off, the wanting and organising of a special name. It smacked of that dread phrase ‘Our little secret’. It was enough their nails were twinned. Still – tempting.
Gigi though, Jean rolled her eyes now, looking at Lily on the other side of the bay. What on earth had she been thinking? Gigi, my arse.
Jean watched Lily approach the nurses’ station, take the nurse in charge to one side asking if it wasn’t time for a syringe driver. The nurse said no, not yet. There wasn’t any discernible breakthrough pain, apparently. How on earth did Lily know about syringe drivers? Jean was amazed.
‘I don’t think we should wait until there’s breakthrough pain,’ Lily said. ‘That would be bad, if we left it that late. No. Can we revisit tomorrow when the doctor does his rounds?’
Revisit! What a mild and elegant way of saying I don’t agree.
The day before, while Ruth slept fitfully, Jean and Lily had a conversation about ‘life-savers’. ‘When someone doesn’t see things my way,’ Jean said, ‘I used to tell them to get lost but now I just say,’ she sweetened her voice to benign automaton setting, ‘ “Do you have any flexibility?” And although it’s less satisfying I seem to get better results.’
‘Like wiggle room,’ Lily said, her face creasing. ‘Or is it wriggle room? I’m never sure.’
‘It’s wiggle,’ Jean said. ‘Easy to remember because a wiggle is a small flexible movement whereas a wriggle . . . a wriggle room would be a room in which to twist and writhe!’
‘Sounds good!’
‘Another one is, “What would you do if you were me?”, which is meant to get the other person to walk in your shoes. Swap allegiances,’ Jean said. ‘Change their perspective, at least. So they say.’
‘I heard Ruth say it on the telephone once. I don’t know if it worked. It was when my – when Eleanor was in the prison that time.’
‘Oh yes,’ Jean said. She heard her breathing coarsen. ‘I remember how unusually warm it was, that autumn, sometimes even hot, until halfway through November . . .’
‘Did you know I was born here?’
‘Yes I did know.’
‘SO cool!’ Lily said. ‘I might pop down to the baby place. Revisit the scenes of my earliest youth!’
‘Yep!’ Jean said. ‘Amazing!’ She closed her eyes. She’d heard of scenes she couldn’t stop herself animating – an infant trailing wires in a see-through box, skin crawling with sores and rashes, trembling unfocused limbs, despair. A babyscape ought to be soft and sweet but here there were only sharp-edged things. It was faintly pornographic in its crisis and craving. Failure and insufficiencies as far as the eye could see. It provoked in Jean a moral vertigo. She closed her eyes more tightly. It’s all right, she reassured. You’re beginning the grief I expect, that’s all. It’s starting.
‘What?’ Lily said. ‘What? Why have you gone all weird?’
‘I was . . . I was just thinking how the time flies, how it has flown, from that day to this. Incredible. All in the blink of an eye in the same building. One minute you’re down on the second floor and . . .’
‘OK?’ Lily said, grinning warily. ‘What have you done with Jean?’
‘What do you –’
‘Aren’t you the person I once heard say to the whole school in assembly, “Teenagers, they grow up so slow”?’
‘Well,’ Jean said. ‘I suppose I may have done. All right. All right. Got a laugh though, didn’t I?’
The next day Ruth lay like a mound of ashes. Her mouth was a separate species though, the lips a good firm red, apart from some white marks that flecked the borders. She was not going to go quietly, that was certain. Odd when she’d never been exactly chatty before. Perhaps that was why it was necessary – shop now while stocks last. Unless the need for privacy was dying too . . . privacy had always been her dominion. Jean admired her for that. Her high, dry style – the things she bit down on habitually.
‘You won’t outdo me will you Jean?’
‘Well I’m going to outlive you, unless you’ve got a gun.’
‘No, I mean you won’t be so much better than me that you make me look awful.’
‘Of course I won’t. Wait – what?’
‘Can you mess up a bit, not do everything perfectly?’
‘These things happen naturally in households staffed by human people.’
‘It’s just your standards are higher than mine and you’re calmer and you’ve got money. And you’re cuddly and cosier too. You have a pink sofa and sweet things in pretty boxes in a cupboard.’
‘Everyone’s more cuddly than a cancer patient.’
‘Oh.’
Then after a minute: ‘I mean, you’re being crazy. People idolise the dead! You’re not thinking straight.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m not sure I can sign up to this. I know you want me to do my best for Lily. You said to knock myself out in every way. Think of the lists of instructions we drew up together. Twelve pages, single-spaced, both sides of the paper. Times New Roman! I am going to give it everything I’ve got – that’s the plan. Also, let us not forget, you don’t have any choice! There isn’t anybody else.’
Ruth’s skin had altered subtly in tone and texture this last half-hour. Her arms had gone the colour of cement.
‘You’re just, you’re just feeling sorry for yourself!’
‘I am on my deathbed Jean.’
‘You don’t want me to fuck it up to make you look better. Not really. That’s not your style. Come on.’ Jean’s voice descended into its Tippex is the Devil timbre.
‘I’m so jealous. All the things I’m going to miss.’
‘Well – yes. I know.’
‘How can I compete?’
‘Well – but you’ve already given Lily the earth.’
‘It makes me think all sorts of terrible things about you.’
‘That’s all right. It’s normal. I can take it.’
‘It’s not very nice though.’
‘You’re going to need to die soon if you keep this up,’ Jean said.
Ruth almost giggled but her face was watery against the parchment skin.
‘You know I think what I’m going to take from this little talk is that when I do err as I inevitably will, I’ll imagine you punching the air with the angels.’
‘I’m not much of an air puncher, though, am I? Could you imagine me clapping with them and their golden harps all in a row?’
‘Yes, I will, that’s much better. And I shall bow and feel the warmth of your approval beating down on my skin. That sound all right?’
Ruth nodded painfully. There were vivid waves of pride and waves of shame. It had always been her currency, Jean thought. She pictured a passport with dual nationality.
‘There’s a girl in year seven at school,’ Jean began, ‘told me every night her big sister says to her, last thing, after they’ve done their teeth, “Night Sophie. Hope you die in your sleep.”’
‘Oh?’
‘Isn’t that . . . severe?’
‘Maybe she means I hope you die in your sleep when you’re an old lady, peacefully and not in pain or in a car accident or at the hands of some axe murderer. I hope you have a good death. It’s sweet.’
‘You think? She’s twelve years old.’
‘Well yes, I think so. Why not?’
‘Whatever you’re on can I have some?’
Ruth pointed at two brown bottles on her nightstand. ‘Fill your boots.’
‘They just leave them lying about? I thought it was all under lock and key.’
‘Not really,’ Ruth said. ‘I’m not sure. The nurse does usually . . . there’s different stuff for different things. They bring round little paper cups.’
‘I see!’ Jean picked up the bottles and tried to read them but the writing was impossible.
‘Maybe I will try one,’ Jean said. ‘I need something. What’s that one there?’
‘A strong one, I think. Tramadol, or is it the other –? There’s the pale blue ones. Lovely colour. What’s that play where the man says “That’s a lovely shade of blue on your woolly”?’
‘Not sure. Is it Pinter maybe or more like Joe Orton? Whoever it was makes shade sound filthy!’
‘I know! And Gabapentin is the yellow ones with the numbers. Quite strong. I like that one. We could take it together, bit like holy communion?’
‘Ha! What time you due your next? We mustn’t be silly about it.’
‘I just wait until the nurse comes usually. It’s my favourite one today, Irene. She’s got four sisters in Jamaica but she is the cleverest and the most beautiful.’
‘Even so, she’s unlikely to hand out freebies to visitors. Or is there happy hour on Fridays?’
‘Is it Friday? That was quick. Thank God it’s Friday Jean!’
‘Maybe,’ Jean said. Then, ‘No I mustn’t, it’s irresponsible. What am I thinking?’
‘We are in a hospital.’
‘Yes, but we’re not in the business of creating more patients. The nurses don’t need extra dramas.’
‘But I never ring my bell or anything. Wouldn’t dream of it. Even if I was –’
‘I know. I know you wouldn’t . . . I, on the other hand . . .’
‘Yes, yes you would. Night and day.’
The song ‘Night and Day’ hovered in the air between them, but neither had the heart to take the bait.
Jean unscrewed the nearest brown bottle and lifted a yellow pill to her mouth. She imagined Ruth’s daughter Eleanor swinging onto the ward, putting on a bright brave blank face for her mother, although they all knew there was no saving things, not now. All the damage imprinted on Ruth’s flesh. Broken tissue scarred and inflamed. And that very odd thing indeed of no one ever judging her. Did they try hard not to, did it just come naturally?
At home in the private solace of her sofa, Jean judged Eleanor mercilessly. She permitted herself little fetishised stints. They hit her system with force, like whipped cream folded into melted chocolate. She admired the judgements that she fashioned, the severity of their tone and tilt; above all their certainty. The wry internal musings of the critic. The sharp observations in the vocative case. What you put your mother through! The breathtaking cruelty of your leisure activities. Wrecking lives with no awareness or compunction. To dedicate your life to torturing others – what venomous career counselling did you attend? And forcing everyone to feel sorry for you in the process. Pitiful girl.
Eleanor ruled through fear, left her mother and daughter routinely stunned and quaking. Afraid to answer the telephone. Afraid to take breaths. The amount of daily courage she exacted from them was an obscenity. Lily wearing yellow to prove she wasn’t crushed, dotting her i’s with hearts to convey optimism. What a strain to perform I’m all right with your every move, hopes pared back beyond what was decent, unable or unwilling to take the measure of the pain.
Eleanor brought Ruth to her knees, kept her there, liked her there. And for what? To what aim? Jean flexed her strict beliefs before her like the founder of a cult. That Ruth also depended on opiates now was a parody of homecoming. Of leave-taking. What ugly parallels. Scoring in the morning, scoring in the evening. Jean shook her head with great bitterness. Still Ruth preferred parody to satire, she had said so more than once. Parody was playful. Less mean-spirited.
Jean’s skin grew hot. It reddened with injustice. She held the pill from the nightstand against her lips in the spirit of can’t beat ’em join ’em. She saw three witches, in her imagination, ancient, cobwebbed and with red-rimmed eyes, but it was just Ruth, Eleanor and Jean when you looked closely – all lolling on the hospital bed singing songs and nodding out. Broomsticks ahoy! Night and Day. Death and Life. They would all go down or all go up together.
The reality was, there was not a single spell left to be cast. A terrible Brecht poem called ‘I am Dirt’ sprang at Jean from God knows where. ‘Unfortunately, I had to do lots of things / That were harmful, purely to stay alive.’ The speaker took so many drugs she called herself a ‘bedsheet with no bones’. Sheets never have or have had bones, Jean was doubtful – but still the phrase had great power. It was how Eleanor was.
The way Jean’s thoughts were going it was as though she was dying. She was too close to things. That was it. All of life was contagious. Of course your head would get muddled with the other person’s at the end. It was just the practical side of ‘for better or for worse’. That was friendship so much more than marriage. No one had a husband from seven to ninety but with women’s love it wasn’t even especially unusual. It would just merit an ‘Oh’ of recognition from another. No one would faint or anything.
Lily arrived and sat with Ruth while Jean palmed the pill and made a raid on the vending machine. A four-finger KitKat detached from its coil and fell with a clunk to the grey trough at the base. Suddenly Jean lifted her hand and banged the glass front with her fist as though it had cheated her. Something was cheating her. Everything was. She didn’t stop beating until the whole machine rattled and began to emit a disastrous echoey wail. She nipped back to the ward in disgrace then, sitting on the blue vinyl chair at the edge of things, giving Ruth and Lily some privacy. She could see they were plotting something.
I’ll get my mum here, leave it to me, no problem.
God. Please not that.
Lily came over to kiss them both goodbye. She was going to a friend’s for a sleepover. It was a good idea and Jean encouraged it. They must pace themselves. She could hold the fort. ‘I’ll ring you at Beth’s if I –’
‘Sure.’
Jean gazed at Ruth in her parlous state. Perhaps Eleanor would come but in what condition? People being absent was more acutely felt by a certain type of individual than people being there. The tendrils of un-love went deeper. A disposition for grief. The impact had been searing, unforgettable, beyond endurance. There was nothing equal to it.
She blinked and took in the facts of the room. Easy does it. Well done. It was routine for her to congratulate herself. Her high opinion was important. She named all the white things she could see on the ward: pillow, sheet, clipboard paper, teacup and saucer, Ruth’s ghost-face beginning to shut down. Ruth was peaceful in her slumbers. Concentrate, Jean told herself.
She sat herself up, stiff in the visitor’s chair, the yellow pill still in her fingers. Sensible and calm now, she weighed things carefully. The truth was she could do with a lift, a break from all the pressure. Lily was off for the night, leaving Jean free to retire from the human race briefly. Saturday tomorrow – no school – excellent. It wasn’t an insane idea. The pill might help her sleep, which would be good. Sleep had become a complete stranger to her nights. She was feeling the strain now, all the time, no denying. Work hospital, work hospital, marking at the bedside, watching over Lily, helping Ruth get to the one thing she didn’t want. Fuck! This hinterland was stretching out for weeks and weeks. Aspects of her personality were becoming inoperable. She needed something. She popped the pill in her mouth – why not? And the way Ruth opened her eyes and shimmered with delight!
‘Oh no Jean stop! I’m so stupid. Christ! That’s Dulcolax.’
Jean yanked it out with the tip of her little finger, scarlet nail nicking the fleshiest part of her gum. The pill was intact and still dry. ‘Ah, that I don’t need,’ she said.
‘Sorry about that.’
‘Never mind. No harm done. I wasn’t thinking.’
‘No you weren’t, I am a bit shocked.’
‘Good!’
‘You ever taken drugs much Jean?’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I have and I haven’t. I had a very bad time with Dexedrine when I was young. Put me off for life. It was dreadful. I went mad for six weeks, but when you go mad you assume it’s forever. It was a shocking time.’
‘Why d’you take it?’
‘This,’ she said, grabbing a handful of belly.
‘Did you go very thin?’
‘It’s hard to know when you’re insane. They had to take me away in a van. It wasn’t pretty.’
‘Christ.’
‘Same thing happened to Muriel Spark! That was some consolation anyway. She wanted to get all slinky one Christmas, save money on her food bills – Dexedrine seemed the perfect answer. But one unexpected side effect – she got completely obsessed with T.S. Eliot! His most Christian play The Confidential Clerk – she thought it held special messages for her, beaming directly from T.S. himself. Then she started to believe he was communicating with her through the Times crossword.’
‘The Confidential Clerk? The crossword? Jean you’re making this up.’
‘No. It’s all there in black and white. All her hallucinations starred Eliot. Isn’t that just so chic? Then she convinced herself he’d taken a job as a window cleaner with some of her friends to get even closer. Rumour has it news reached him of her predicament and he wrote to her to say he wasn’t trying to reach her at all.’
‘Christ! Sending a message to say he wasn’t sending messages. Only a man!’
‘I know.’
‘Mine are mostly weddings and christenings.’
‘Well a hallucination ought to feature rites of passage I think. That sounds good and proper. I think it’s healthy.’ At her ‘healthy’, Jean winced. What the fuck is wrong with you?
Snoozing happened to both of them then, Ruth’s head on the pillow, Jean’s nestled against the chair. It was very warm in the bay – Jean couldn’t help think free heating. And later, in the night, when the ward was lightless apart from a pale column of blue and almost dead apart from a pair of drowsy nurses, Jean woke and started whispering.
‘Hey! You knew all along about that pill! God I’m slow. You were teasing me. You beast!’
Ruth stirred and rigged up a dim smile. Her eyes lit a little. Were there the dregs of mischief there?
‘Oh, I could kill you! You villain!’
‘Better get a move on then.’ Her voice was dry and sore and inhospitable.
‘Don’t . . .’
And after a few minutes, ‘Jean?’
‘Yep?’
‘I do love you.’ Their fingers wove together hungry on the damp top sheet.
‘You’re not so bad yourself.’
It was their last speaking.
Photography by Sabine Hess, You Felt the Roots Grow