Once a Land Girl (42 page)

Some time later an orderly came into the room, switched on the light, and gave her a cup of tea and a Digestive biscuit. She realized she was hungry, but the biscuit stuck in her throat.

Later still, someone brought in a camp bed with a rubber mattress, a blanket and pillow. Gerald had obviously pulled rank somewhere.

All through the night nurses, and sometimes a doctor, came regularly into the room, looked at Ivy, touched her closed eyelids and left without a word. When she was alone again Prue would get up
and look at her, too. She had drawn back the curtains. An almost full moon filled the small room with a pallor that matched Ivy’s skin. Prue didn’t touch her again: she thought she
might be cold, turned to marble. She did not want to witness the moment her heart stopped beating – if it stopped beating. As the night lumbered on, a strange optimism came to Prue. Ivy
wouldn’t die because she was so capable: capable of everything which included surviving to a very old age. Mrs Lawrence had been beaten by cancer. Ivy had suffered merely a bad jolt. She
would come round, recover, live a good while longer in the Old Rectory, teaching things to Prue.

She slept scarcely at all. Sharp clouds of thought moved across the taut sky of her mind. If she married Gerald, perhaps she could tease out the hidden, loving side of his nature. They would
live in the Old Rectory among Mrs Lamton’s things. It wouldn’t be quite the same as when she was alive, of course. A few alterations would have to be made. The kitchen repainted, the
treacherous stairs carpeted. But she would love it, as Ivy had loved it.

If she stayed with Johnny she could perhaps help him to resist drinking. They could put all their energies into transforming the cottage into a comfortable and happy place. They could buy more
land, sheep, cows . . .

If she replied to Rudolph’s invitation, she could perhaps persuade herself that to live in America would be ideal, so long as he agreed to get rid of the pigs.

So many perhapses. And perhaps all the possibilities were ridiculous, because she didn’t love any of the men in question in quite the right way – not in the way Ivy had loved Ed, or
Mrs Lawrence had loved Mr Lawrence, or Ag loved Desmond or Stella loved Joe . . . No: the fact was Prue didn’t love, absolutely, any of the men she had thrown into these dawn
calculations.

The young doctor looked round the door. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked, looking down at the muddle of Prue’s camp bed. She nodded, thanked him. Out of an old habit that
returned whenever she saw a man she fancied, she fluttered her eyelashes. The doctor didn’t seem to notice. Hardly surprising, really: the mascara had long gone. ‘We’ll be looking
in on Mrs Lamton all the time,’ he said, and left the room.

The thought came to Prue that she wouldn’t mind being married to a doctor, and he had such a friendly face. She wondered if it would be possible, once Ivy was better and back at home, to
get in touch with him. She could explain to Ivy how good he had been when she was unconscious, and perhaps suggest asking him to the Old Rectory for tea. Then it would be easy. A walk in the
garden, a certain kind of giggle when she explained she didn’t know one flower from another . . . Prue’s imaginings gathered speed. She looked again at Ivy, trying to gauge how likely
the tea invitation would be, and felt a shadow of guilt about the trivial nature of her hopes when Ivy was not really there.

She tried to shift herself into a comfortable position. There was no hope of sleep. She watched the dawn press through the parrot curtains and turn the walls of the room the colour of an unripe
apple. She cursed herself for all the preposterous thoughts that came to her while the old lady lay there knowing nothing.

Gerald returned early the next morning. ‘No change?’

‘Doesn’t seem to be.’

‘But they got you a bed?’

‘Thanks so much.’

‘Ed and Ivy gave pretty generously to the hospital.’

Prue said she would go and wash, and dress. Her head felt unbalanced from lack of sleep. Top heavy. Full of strange weights. Her ribs continued with their dull ache, which every now and then
accelerated into acute pain, surprising her. When she returned to the room she found Gerald in the chair reading
The Times.

‘Brought you something,’ he said, and reached into a briefcase. ‘Here.’ He handed her the copy of
Emma
she had been reading before the accident and a bag of plums.
‘I’ll go shopping later today, try to find you something decent to eat.’

‘You mustn’t go to any trouble, really – I’m not hungry.’

‘If you’re going to keep watch, you must be looked after. Ivy would be furious with me if I hadn’t taken care of you.’ Gerald opened his paper.

All day long nurses and doctors paid brief visits to the room. Looked at Ivy. Felt her pulse. Expressionless. They said nothing, gave no news. Gerald came and went. He asked for another chair.
Prue read her book, occasionally forcing herself from Mr Knightley’s wisdom to look at the unmoving Ivy. Gerald took to reading a few snippets from his paper aloud: humorous bits that made
them both smile for a scant second. Prue liked his quiet presence, hated the moments he left. Johnny did not appear again.

For three days Prue and Gerald lived their odd, camp-like existence in the small room, one each side of the effigy-like figure on the bed. A kind of rhythm came to the days: exits and entrances,
looks exchanged between the nursing staff, cups of hospital tea, moments of escaping it all while reading, attempts to eat the things Gerald brought in paper bags. From time to time they were both
asked to leave the room. They would stand adrift in the corridor, brushed by the sweep of passing nurses, trying not to imagine. Sometimes Gerald would take Prue’s hand, but only for a
moment, and with a politeness suitable to the situation rather than growing affection. When they returned to the room the pillows had been replumped, the sheet beneath Ivy’s clenched hands
pulled taut again. But her demeanour had not changed.

Prue observed that Gerald was becoming distracted, anxious about something far from the hospital. He explained he was needed for a meeting that he kept having to postpone. But he would stay a
couple more days. ‘And then,’ he said, ‘you should go home. You can’t stay here for ever. She might hang on for months. People do.’

‘But I want to be here when she comes round,’ Prue said, dreading his departure.

‘I think you should realize,’ Gerald replied quietly, ‘there’s a chance she may never come round. I had a word with her doctor. I’ll be back this
afternoon.’

The third day passed more slowly than the others. Dazed from lack of sleep, Prue felt a curious longing to talk to Johnny. But she had no energy to walk to the sister’s office and ask if
she could use the telephone. She merely wanted to hear from the outside world, but gave up the idea, returned to her book, and more cups of tea. Occasionally she went to the window to look out on a
jagged landscape of roofs. She had discovered how to move about the room without looking at Ivy. Gerald sent a message to say he had been held up, couldn’t get back, but would be there early
next morning.

That night, exhausted, Prue fell asleep as soon as she lay on the camp bed. She woke at first light. The parrots, through her sleep-clouded eyes, were a jumble on the curtains, their orderly
lines in a muddle she could not sort out. She sat up, sensing a depth to the usual silence. She glanced up at Ivy. At first she saw only that her hands were no longer lying outside the bedclothes
but were under a sheet, which stretched right over her head. Prue sat holding her knees to her chest, making her ribs throb: she needed the physical pain.

A nurse, an older one she had not seen before, came into the room.

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs . . . Your grandmother passed away at four twenty-eight this morning.’ She took a fob watch on a chain from the pocket of her starched apron. ‘Just a
quarter of an hour ago. I didn’t like to wake you.’

‘No,’ said Prue.

‘There was nothing to be done. She wouldn’t have known you were there. She passed away peacefully.’

‘Good.’

‘Would you care to see her? Be alone with her a while?’

‘No, thanks.’ The nurse looked surprised. ‘I want to remember her alive. Not dead.’

‘Very well. I’ll get you a cup of tea.’

Prue stood up. ‘If it’s all right,’ she said, ‘I’d rather stay in the passage till Mrs Lamton’s nephew arrives. I don’t much want to be alone with . .
.’ Her voice was so taut she knew it would break if she tried to explain.

Again the nurse looked surprised, but she said, ‘There’s a little reception area just down to the left, sofas and chairs. I’ll bring your tea there.’

‘Thanks,’ said Prue. She picked up the bundle of her clothes and quickly followed the nurse out of the room. Her last sight of Ivy was of a small shape, a narrow ridge, under a
sheet. It was only then she noticed the precise angle of the elegant nose. It made a small, sharp point under its deathly covering, which Prue had never noticed when Ivy was alive.

On the sofa in the reception area she could not read. She sat staring out of the window at early-morning life in the street: people queuing for buses, hurrying along pavements
bent against a shower of strong rain. It occurred to her that many people must feel as she did when someone they love dies: shock, surprise that life goes on, impervious. Rage against the
continuing of the day welled up in her. She could not drink the tea. She stared at patients wheeled down the corridor, wondering when they were going to die. Some of the passing nurses threw her a
sympathetic look.

Gerald appeared soon after ten. ‘They told me at the desk,’ he said. ‘I saw her. Said goodbye.’

Prue fell forward into his arms. He held her silently for a long time. Then he said, ‘Shall I tell you something? She told me only a few days ago, before the accident, what a joy
you’d been to her. Brightened her life, she said. So, though neither of you knew it, you made her last year very happy. Remember that.’ He pushed Prue a little away from him.
‘Here, don’t cry.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Why don’t I run you back to the Old Rectory? You could stay a day or two, get some sleep. I’ll have to take care of the funeral and everything.’

Prue thought about this suggestion. ‘Think I’d better go home. Johnny’ll . . .’

‘Whatever you like.’ Gerald stiffened slightly. ‘I’ll drive you there, then come back to make arrangements, do whatever’s needed.’

‘Thanks.’ Prue nodded.

Gerald held her again, put his cheek against hers. ‘God I’ll miss Aunt Ivy,’ he said. ‘Wish I’d done more for her. I loved her.’

‘So did I,’ said Prue.

They drove to the cottage in silence. There, Gerald dropped her at the gate. He did not get out of the car, and drove away with no word. Prue looked up the path to where Johnny was leaning
against the door, waiting for her.

P
rue wanted to hurry towards him but her feet would not obey her. When she was halfway up the path Johnny turned from his place in the doorway and
ran to his shed. He went inside, banged the door. Prue was too exhausted to care, or to put on the kettle once she was in the kitchen. She tried to remember how the room had looked before Ivy died.
She had always found it strange, the way events change the look of familiar, solid things.

A letter from Barry was waiting for her. She took a knife, opened it. Something to do, this empty day, when nothing mattered.

Prue put the letter to one side, looked up to see Johnny slouching past the kitchen window. He came in, sat beside her. ‘So sorry,’ he said. ‘I suddenly couldn’t face
you, couldn’t think what to say to you. I’m all over the place.’ Prue nodded. She didn’t much care where he was. ‘I know how much Ivy meant to you. At least, I think I
do. I’m not much good at gauging that sort of thing.’ He got up, went over to the kettle, made coffee, returned to the table. He looked very far away. ‘They told me at the
hospital she died at four this morning. Except they said “passed away”. I suppose that’s meant to sound gentler, take the edge off the actuality.’ Prue nodded again.
Johnny’s words were a skein of wool, dipping and twisting, not making much sense. ‘Is there anything I can do to help? What are your plans?’

Plans? Prue asked herself the question, drank some of the coffee. ‘I haven’t slept much for three nights,’ she said, ‘so I suppose I should go to bed now for a while if I
want to make any sense. But I need a car till the Sunbeam’s repaired. Could you find somewhere that hires cars by the week? Just some small thing so I don’t have to keep asking you for
lifts.’

‘Of course,’ Johnny said.

They sat in silence for a while, their hands flat on a square of sun that had appeared on the table.

‘You’ll soon find another job, I’m sure. Maybe looking after people is what you’re cut out to do. And forget, please forget, what I said about leaving. You can stay here
as long as you like. I know I said I find it difficult, but it would be much worse without you. All right?’

Prue looked at him, gave a disinterested nod. ‘I’m going up to bed,’ she said.