AFTERWARD, SISTERS MCCLELLAN AND Bond were most sweet to Rupert and me. No, we two must rest a moment before we went; it was always a shock, no matter who. And talking a bit afterward always helped, no matter to whom.

I saw that Rupert really was somewhat in shock; we had better stay on a bit. Besides, I was interested, though fearful of being drawn in—the way one is when one accepts a ‘free consultation.’

‘And no matter how the patient dies?’ I said.

In the most modest way, they declined to accept my hostility. They had met such before.

‘We think we make a difference.’

McClellan was not as hard as she looked, I decided.

‘There are many like us.’

And Sister Bond was not that soft.

In the next room, the morticians were already present. The hotel would have a routine, of course.

‘I don’t know how it is with your nurses over here.’ Bond’s expression suggested she thought she did know. ‘I rather suspect they’re trained to do a job. A very good job, I’m sure. But with us—nursing is a vocation!

‘No matter the specialty,’ McClellan said.

From the next room, someone knocked.

‘They’ll be ready with her now—’ one said, and the other: ‘We always see them out. Our people.’ There was a moment when I thought they might be going to ask Rupert and me to join them. Then they said, in their almost chorus: ‘Would you care to use the facilities?’

As I said to Rupert later, for a minute I wasn’t sure which facility they meant, until they indicated that this second sitting room we were in also had a bathroom.

Rupert used it first, then I. As I was peeing, I heard Gertrude being escorted out. I could think of myself as the surviving wife if I wanted to, and in a way I did, washing my hands carefully at the tap.

‘I suppose we must wait for them,’ Rupert said when I came out. ‘Only polite.’

I wanted to walk to the window to see the view from up here. These days I seldom find myself on such a high floor, and the bird’s-eye relationship of buildings is worth study. But it somehow wasn’t part of today’s deal.

Rupert, too, is immobilized. ‘Lucky they have a suite.’

‘Oh, we had to … Oh, we banked on it…’ we hear from behind us.

How noiselessly they have come back, how unchanged. How reassuring it must be, to their patients, their ‘people,’ that those headdresses never slip. Their uniforms, too, stay so unmussed that day after day, watching from bed or chair, one might be forgiven for hoping that the starch they use is mixed with immortality. Which those soft gestures of theirs will one day confer.

Too sweetly perhaps. Do I find that horrifying?

Then why had I said what I had to Gertrude, at her end?

‘You banked on us—didn’t you, Sisters?’ I say.

They aren’t shocked. They must get all sorts of reactions, when they draw outsiders in. As they must do with intent. Have to do, to perform their—job.

‘No one else would come …’

‘… would come.’

It’s only our specialty, their stare, not plaintive, seems to say. As with the hotel and the mortician, they would have certain routines. Deferent enough, say, to address the patient formally almost to the day, then warming in at the death with the Christian name, as a family servant might. Speaking all the while in chorus so as not to infringe personally, yet coping close.

‘Well … she died as she lived,’ Rupert said.

The Sisters stand quite still.

I feel their disapproval. So must he.

I want to say to them—Don’t you dare impugn those who are not in your sect, not of your persuasion. Those of us who, against all your charitableness know we will die a raging, lonely, irreligious death. A single one, whether or not a boon companion exists. Or existed. You two are nurses, not nuns.

They put out their hands to us in the softest gesture, not touching us quite. As if we need this surely, but they will hold off until we are drawn in—perhaps not by them.

‘Dying is living,’ Sister McClellan said.

I wait for Sister Bond to follow with the proper echo—will it be Living is Dying?—but she does not.

Why—they’re quite ordinary women, I see, gathering their own strength. Wanting to be drawn in. Having a specialty doesn’t mean you don’t need to be warmed.

Rupert saw that, as he always does. Did he also intend more? He says: ‘One day—we may drop in on you at Wandsworth. Never seen a real hospice in operation. I’m sure you do—yeoman work there.’

The two of them turn to each other, then to the room, surveying the Plaza’s broad chintzes, tireless armchairs, plastic ice-bucket, and the desk’s array of cardboard advice.

‘This is a hospice,’ they said.