Lilian's Story (36 page)

Sometimes the kiddies visited us, and would be red in the face from their charitable deed.
Merry Christmas and God
bless you
, some blond innocent would say, and try to smile as she handed me a cube of bath salts or a bookmark. God was still nobody I knew, but I knew about kindness, and watched the heat in her cheeks as she did her best to provide me with
a few minutes' chat,
as they had all been told to. I decided that she needed a little of my wisdom, and told her.
Do not
worry about getting old gracefully, girlie, be foolish and loud if you feel
like it
. I saw her beginning to look alarmed, but I had more to say:
Dignity and respect are humbug, remember that, girlie.
This blond girl was still smiling a fixed smile at me but she was inching away and her eyes were darting past me, enviously watching her classmates, who were happy shouting at deaf Bess, or looking at the hand-crocheted handkerchief that Doris's daughter had made for her. My poor red girl, who was so clean and scrubbed and optimistic she could only have been class captain, was at last rescued by Sister Isola. She brushed her off towards tremulous Annie, who had missed out on a visitor, and roared in her big fat way, which I liked because it was the same big fat way that I roared:
Lil, do not bully the poor child with your wisdom.
She winked from her big brown eye, so that we both had to laugh our big fat laughs, and everyone stopped for a moment and stared, even deaf Bess and the girl who was becoming hoarse, trying to
have a little chat
with her.

You should be ashamed, Lil
, Sister Isola said later, and I was, because I could remember being young and blushing, although I had never had the consolation of being class captain. But I could also remember how you remembered things, at that age, and hoped she might remember what I had said.
Everyone should be warned off humbug
, I told the room, when Sister Isola had gone.
Humbug is bad for one's
immortal soul.
Deaf Bess, sitting by the window, nodded and smiled at me, nodded and smiled, and Doris said loudly,
Three rows of triple chain and a scallop of interlocked filigree stitch
, and smoothed and smoothed the hankie, shredded with age and too many tears, on her knee.

Visits

They told us carefully what would be happening. We had all been led or wheeled into the big dining room and Sister Isola had spoken with great clarity above the burblings and poppings, the crackling noises of old uncontrolled farts, the snores from the ones who were too far gone to be awake even for this, and above the occasional shouts of deaf Bess, who thought she was whispering. Sister Isola explained very carefully about the saintly visitor we would be receiving, the great honour, the blessedness of being so close to someone so holy.
It is the Pope
, I thought, and felt a ticking pulse of the old excitement and devilry in my veins.
I will go down in the
books as the one who made the Pope listen.
I was already preparing what I would like to tell him, and jiggling from one buttock to the other on the hard seat, and rehearsing a few good phrases, because now that my time was nearly up, I wanted more than ever to be remembered in the books.

It was a disappointment to realise at last that Sister Isola, solemn today in her fat, was talking simply about another holy woman, one who washed lepers in Calcutta and did not flinch from the starving. I was disappointed, but even in this, my old age and great weakness, I was able to accommodate myself to the vagaries of life, and began to prepare another kind of thing to say. I was not so sure, though, of being brave with someone who had seen suffering on a large scale. I would have been more sure of myself with a man who had spent his life in cloisters full of red robes.

Sister Isola understood me like myself:
Now
, she said,
I
am fond of you, and do not wish you to be exposed to the temptation of
sin.
She smiled her wicked nun's smile at me, which made her eyes disappear into her cheeks the same way mine did, and there was a wink, so fleeting no one could have held her responsible for it.
We have planned something you will enjoy,
Lil. And you are a good girl, and will understand.

When they dressed me in my woollies, and took me to the front door on the day of the visit, I did not object. They had been praying and cleaning mightily for weeks now, and deaf Bess had been given a new frock, because of so many breakfasts on the other, and quivering Annie had been propped up in the wicker chair with the cushions carefully arranged. While I was waiting, sitting on the doorstep watching the gate, I could hear the crowing and clucking as the nuns encouraged the evacuation of all the old bowels. The nuns had explained that the morning cup of tea would be brought
afterwards
, in case there should be any accidents, and Sister Annunciata was brushing the thin hair of all the bed cases, and trying to straighten their wobbly old necks on the pillows. There was such a mewing and murmuring, such a bustle of starch and bombazine, such unaccustomed flowers in vases, and such a glare of polish and shine that I was pleased to be leaving, and stood up impatiently, and shouted
Taxi! Taxi!
until it drew up at the gate.

Taxis had begun to smell differently since I had last been in one, and everyone seemed to drive much faster and more recklessly. For the first few miles I sat back against the plastic and panted, and prepared to stick my head out the window like a dog, and be sick. At last I remembered I was not a dog, and said in a loud though reedy voice,
Slower, driver, slower, or you will part me from my breakfast.
He drove more slowly after that, and I began to enjoy my day, and made him stop so I could join him on the front seat, and loved it all.

It is not everyone who has a chance for a last look, but I did. I saw the white castle by the water, where Frank had offered solace when it was needed. I cried a little, for Frank who had gone in pain, probably, but quickly. This man who drove was not Frank, but was old enough to be sympathetic, and did not mind stopping for a while, and let me cry for Frank.
Call me George, Lil
, he said, and I was not sure I fancied his freedom with my name, but he was the guide for my last journey, so I shook his hand and called him George.
George
, I asked,
am I famous?
George laughed a phlegmy smokers' laugh and cried,
By George, I'll say you are, Lil, if that is the kind
of fame you are after.
I did not know what kind of fame I was after, but I was pleased.
Any kind will do, George,
I said, and dried my last tear.

George took me past the station, where I had caught the trains, and buses, when I had still travelled to the country, and he made a slow stately tour of the university. I would have liked to get out, and weep a little over the quadrangles, the bell tower where F.J. Stroud had cried his slimy tears, and would have liked to make myself dizzy once more in that steep lecture hall. But my old swollen legs would not support me that far now. And I was intimidated by the young girls striding in their pants, and boys with long hair and beads around their foreheads. None of these people copied their notes from one page to another, I could tell, and none wore pink sashes or had glory boxes, though I thought they probably schemed and sighed just as everyone always had.

And Duncan? I wondered, watching a serious pair of men in tweed—the men in tweed would never change, and would always take themselves seriously, but would be forgotten—where was Duncan, and what had become of Joan? I lay back against the sweating plastic seat, watching the men in tweed pretending they were the great minds of their generation, and could imagine Joan leathery, a famous horsewoman, out there with the men when it was time to muster, shouting with the best of them, red in the face and as foul of mouth as the rest. I could imagine Duncan on the other side of the dusty mob, proud of his leathery wife, could see them later in the kitchen with the corned beef between them. I could imagine them sitting there together belching, easy companions and mates after so many years.

But it was also easy to imagine Joan tired of the isolation, the absence of cheap Chow feeds and men to shock, and the Country Women's Association no fun to scandalise, but just dull the way they all left you alone and sneered at your scones. I could imagine the row with Duncan, the flight back to the city, to a life of alimony and gin perhaps, or great art in a smell of turps, or renunciation and good works. Joan was someone it was easy to write many histories for. Duncan was even easier. He would have grown drier and sandier with each year, would have lost his hair, would always have a pale forehead while the rest of his face was as brown as the earth, from the felt hat he would wear year after year. It would be dark with old sweat around the band, and holes would eventually wear through on the folds, but it would have to go to his grave with him.

The story of all our lives is the story forward to death, although each of us might hope to be the exception. I have lived, and have seen more dawns than most people, and more different expressions on the faces of ordinary men and women in the street. I have seen much, but would not claim to have seen everything. I would not mind another century or two, to see some more. Perhaps in my second century I could choose to be lovely, slim, delectable as a peach, the jewel of some man's heart.

My life now is in its time of long shadows over the grass, the sad look of faraway hills slipping into dimness, a blue so melting as to be one with the sky. I fill myself now, and look with pity on those hollow men in their suits, those hollow women in their classic navy and white. They have not made themselves up from their presents and their pasts, but have let others do it for them—while I, large and plain, frightening to them and sometimes to myself, have taken the past and the present into myself. My flesh will become still one day soon, cold within a few hours, disgusting in a week, clean white bones eventually, or a handful of ash. But my name will live, in the different kinds of smiles on the faces of people remembering me, and that is enough immortality for me.

Death will come to us all, might come as we wash our hands before dinner, or walk fast to catch a bus to take us somewhere there was no need to go. There have been as many deaths in the world as there have been lives, and although on the slippery seat of the taxi I might shed some tears for Frank and Duncan and Ursula, and their private deaths, and for my own, fast approaching, in the eyes of history all that is invisible.
Drive on,
I told George, and he heard the tears in my voice and turned to stare, but I was impatient with the curiosity of the living now, and waved my hands at him until he looked away.
Drive on, George
, I cried at him.
I am ready for whatever comes next.