5
The gates themselves have long since been removed: the hinges still remain, and the rust which has stained the inside of the posts, a layer of ochrish-brown against the black.
From the drive itself it’s impossible to see the house, or any of its numerous shed-like extensions. To my left is a playing field owned, reputedly, by the local council: pitches have been marked out and posts set down, and, at the very centre, stands a brick pavilion, blackened by soot and falling into ruin. At the far side of the field a line of trees stands up, faintly, against a low bank of mist and cloud.
To my right the view’s completely obscured by a tall brick wall, a hedge and several trees. The drive itself runs straight ahead; I’ve never followed it, in fact, to its furthest end; it comes out, allegedly, by a shallow stream and from a wooden bench, according to Yvonne, you can gaze out, across the river and the fields, towards the town.
The drive broadens to my right: white lines have been drawn across the tarmac; parking places, marked out and numbered. Only two of the places are occupied today. Directly ahead appears the entrance to the house, an architraved porch set at the top of a flight of steps. A man with a broom is working on a lawn at the side of the house; a mound of leaves he’s swept up is being loaded by a tall, broad-shouldered man into a wooden barrow.
I let the glass door bang to behind.
On each visit I remind myself to close the door behind me; each time, forgetting, I let it crash, wincing, half-turning to see the view outside – the drive, the trees, the vista opening to the field – tremble as the glass vibrates in the loose, ill-fitting, wooden frame.
I nod to the receptionist behind her counter and turn off, to my right, along the corridor leading to the ward itself.
The floor, evidently, has just been polished: it reflects the bowls of flowers standing in the window-bays, chrysanthemums, irises, a bunch of roses; I can hear the music from a wireless, a concert, coming from one of the private rooms.
The corridor, beyond a wooden door, opens out directly into a dining-room. It’s set out like a small cafeteria, with yellow, plastic-covered tables and yellow, plastic-covered chairs. A nurse, in a white apron and a blue dress, is setting the tables: she looks up, smiles, and nods towards the door leading, past the kitchen and the matron’s office, to the common-room.
‘Watching telly.’
A woman is lying on a couch, opposite the kitchen door, her head propped on her hand. In the common-room beyond, a crowd of women are gathered round the television set. I catch a glimpse of several horses, hear the commentator’s voice, then see Yvonne, tall, slender, walking up and down in the corridor which leads through from the common-room to the ward itself.
She’s smoking, her head bowed, gazing at the floor. A nurse, in a white apron and a blue dress, is fastening up a cupboard on the wall.
‘There’s your husband here now, Mrs Freestone,’ the nurse has said.
She closes the cupboard door: it has two locks, one in the centre of the door, exactly like a safe. The shelves inside, I notice, before the door clicks to, are full of transparent plastic boxes, each one labelled with a name, and containing a variety of coloured pills and capsules.
Yvonne looks up, nods, her gaze abstracted.
‘Is it today you were coming, then?’ she says.
I glance over to the nurse. ‘Is it all right if we go out for a meal?’ I ask.
‘Not today.’ The nurse has returned the keys of the cupboard to the pocket of her apron. ‘I can ask if you like. Your wife was asking this morning. We thought it best she stayed today.’
‘It doesn’t bother me,’ Yvonne has said. She continues pacing up and down. Through the window of the ward beyond I can see the lawn at the front of the house and the man with the broom sweeping up the leaves and the tall, broad-shouldered man loading up the barrow.
‘You can have a spot of dinner here,’ the nurse has said. ‘I’ll fix it up. We’ll put you on the table at the end.’ She adds this to Yvonne, stooping slightly so that she can see into her face. ‘Would you like that, Mrs Freestone? Have a spot of lunch with your husband, then?’
‘It doesn’t bother me,’ Yvonne has said.
‘She’ll be after it like a shot, once she gets the smell.’ The nurse has laughed. She jangles the keys inside her pocket.
‘We’ll have a walk round, then,’ I tell her. ‘If that’ll be all right.’
‘Work up an appetite.’ The nurse gestures at Yvonne. ‘She could do with putting a bit of stuff inside. Turned her nose up, you know, the last few times.’
Yvonne has stubbed out her cigarette. She’s gone over to a mirror on the wall while the nurse is talking. She runs a lipstick round her mouth, lightly, lifting her head, gazing into the mirror which is set on the wall directly opposite the cupboard. For a while, the lipstick poised, she examines her own expression: the dark eyes set wide apart, the mouth still parted, the broad cheeks, the hair combed down, loosely, across her brow. It’s almost, oddly, a girl’s expression, frank, ingenuous, inquiring. It’s only when the nurse takes the lipstick and asks her if she’s finished that she looks away.
‘I’ve brought you some cigarettes.’ I hold out the packet. ‘I’ll put them in your locker.’
‘Oh,’ she says. She nods her head.
I go through to the ward. Her scarf and beret are lying on the bed. Her locker door is open. Inside is a carrier bag, a nightgown, a skirt, a blouse, some underwear, several bits of paper, and the torn-up remnants of several cigarette packets.
I put the two full packets on top of the nightdress and close the door.
I pick up her beret and scarf, push her slippers, which are lying in the middle of the floor, under the bed, then go back down the ward.
The nurse has gone. Yvonne has returned to pacing up and down.
‘Have you got your coat?’ I ask.
She’s lit another cigarette. She glances across at me, still dazed.
‘What?’
‘Your coat.’
‘I don’t need a coat.’
‘Don’t you want to have a walk?’ I say.
‘Anything. Anything that’ll get me out of here.’
She carries the cigarette with the lighted end turned in towards her palm. She twists her hand round as she puts the cigarette to her mouth, as if she were coughing onto the back of her hand, or yawning; then she turns to the annexe and the toilets where her coat and her jacket are usually kept.
Outside a faint drizzle is falling. ‘Don’t go far,’ the matron says, calling, from the door of her office. ‘Dinner soon.’
Yvonne doesn’t answer. I doubt if she even hears.
‘Don’t walk her too far,’ the matron says.
‘Do you mind the rain?’ I ask her when we get outside. She walks a little way ahead, her hands in the pockets of her coat. Her head is bowed, her beret pulled over to one side. ‘Do you mind the rain?’ I ask again.
I catch her up.
‘I don’t mind anything.’ She glances round. ‘Did they say we could go out?’ she says.
‘Not today.’ I shake my head.
She nods.
We turn off along a footpath that leads away from the drive and the main building, past the extensions, to the garden area beyond.
I can feel the drizzle against my cheeks. I have no hat; I pull up my collar and, like Yvonne, push my hands inside my pockets. She walks ahead, her dark hair sticking out from beneath the beret, neat, slim, compact, absurdly self-possessed.
‘I wish I could get out of here,’ she says, suddenly, pausing, so that I hear her clearly as I catch her up. She takes out a cigarette, searching for her lighter.
She flicks up the flame, shielding it with one hand. In moments of distress, like this, it seems strange she can light a cigarette at all. It’s like putting on the lipstick: odd activities, casual, almost incidental, which, because of their casualness, show up the turmoil going on inside. At first, during my early visits, she’d cried. She’d cried the first time, coming out of the door of the ward, smiling, red-faced, as she might have come out of a room at home, pleased, talking to the nurse; then, the next moment, with the same casualness, as I grasped her arm, she’d begun to weep, hardly aware, like a child, her words lost in a strangled, half-suffocating wail. She’d cried too when I’d begun to leave, standing in the porch, her face inflamed, her dark eyes wet, expressionless. She’d cried then, almost out of habit, at the beginning of every visit, as if she were presenting me her grief, a credential to reassure me that she had, after all, come to the proper place.
I walk with her more slowly up and down the path. A few vegetables stick up from the clayey, greyish earth; most of the garden has recently been dug. To one side a pile of manure has been spread along the bed of a narrow trench.
‘I’ve got a job.’
‘What?’
‘Teaching.’
‘What?’
She walks ahead.
It’s like walking out a dog.
‘I thought I’d get the job …’
‘What?’
‘To keep me occupied.’
‘What?’
‘I thought I’d get a bit of money while I had the chance.’
‘Yes.’
‘We’ll need it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Three days a week.’
‘Three.’
‘I said I’d never go there when I saw it. Remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘The art school.’
‘Yes.’
‘The rest of the time I’ve been playing tennis.’
‘The women are the worst.’
‘Why mix with them?’ I ask.
‘You have to. If you want a cup of tea.’
‘Can’t you wait till meal-time, then?’
‘It’s hours.’
I shake my head. Yvonne is gazing round her once again. Her eyes are nervously alight; it’s as if she expects a woman to leap out from the ground itself.
‘As soon as you take out a cigarette, round they come. Ask to buy one and they haven’t any money. You give them all away then you don’t have one yourself.’
I wonder, in any case, whether she gives the things away. It’s like her to; and then, having done so, it’s like her to complain.
‘Same with tea. Buy a cup and they ask you if you’ll lend them twopence.’
‘Twopence?’
‘That’s what tea costs,’ she says, ‘round here.’
She looks up at me, curious, as if she finds it strange I don’t know about the price of tea; as if some integral part of her pain has been ignored or overlooked.
‘Twopence. It’s not much. But they never have it.’
We walk on to the end of the path, turn, pause; Yvonne starts off again.
‘Marking time.’
Yvonne, however, scarcely listens.
‘How’s my mother?’
‘All right.’
‘It’s her I feel most for.’
‘She’s all right. She’s fine.’
‘I could stick it if it wasn’t for her.’
Her mother visits her on Wednesdays.
‘Shall we walk on a bit?’ I ask.
‘It’s all the same.’ She shakes her head.
The cloud, if anything, is thickening. I can see the rain glistening on the top of her beret and along the shoulder of her coat, fine beads of moisture caught by the strands of cloth.
‘Should be dinner-time soon.’
‘Grand meals they have in here. I’ll grant you that.’
‘Do you want to go in, or do you prefer to stay out here?’
‘Stay out. The longer I’m out of there the better.’
For a moment, in fact, she appears quite normal. The look, however, scarcely lasts.
‘Maybe next week we can go out and get a meal.’
I wonder what has happened during the week to make them feel it’s wiser that she stays inside. Perhaps she’s argued with her mother, or grown unduly distressed at seeing her leave. With her, frequently, she behaves exactly like a child, clinging to her, her head hidden against her shoulder while her mother pats her back and tries to kiss her cheek.
‘It’s a hell-place, this.’
‘Today’s not so good. When the sun’s out it’s always different.’
‘You don’t realize. Some of the people. You wouldn’t understand. The sooner I get out of here the better.’ She looks across, almost with the same expression she uses on her mother. ‘They haven’t given you a date, then, have they?’
‘They don’t. Not until you’re ready. They usually tell you the day before.’
‘Yes.’
She nods.
Most of the things I tell her she disbelieves, exaggerating her helplessness at times, as if to press the responsibility for her being here directly onto me.
‘If they told me to jump off the roof I’d do it. Anything they tell me; anything they tell me to get me out of here.’
She stresses continually her willingness to co-operate: pills, tests, exercise, meals. At the beginning, she’d done everything they’d asked her. Only recently has there been a slowing down, a faint distrust, as if somewhere her real complaint, her real anguish, has gone unnoticed.
‘I’ll never get out of here,’ she says.
‘Don’t worry. Just think: all the time, it’s getting nearer.’
‘It’s getting near; but it’s not getting out of here that’s getting near.’
I turn her attention to the plants.
‘Do you remember the sprouts we used to grow? We’d go out and get them on a Christmas morning.’ Yvonne moves on again; when I catch her up I see she’s started weeping. ‘Let’s be making tracks. A good meal’ll make all the difference.’
She nods. We’re walking away from the house. From beyond the trees comes the dull, dual-tone hooting of an engine. The bare trees enclosing the garden are shrouded now in mist. I try to imagine the room, Hendricks, Wilcox; anyone, that is, not concerned with this. My mind, briefly, moves on to the girl.
I take her arm. I feel her strange compactness.
We’ve turned towards the house. It’s like holding a piece of stone; I can feel the hardness beneath the coat.
‘I’ve felt lost ever since I got up this morning.’
‘Let’s get out of the rain and have a bite to eat.’
‘It comes on you. I don’t know why. Nothing matters any more.’
‘We’ll be all right.’
She nods. ‘I’d give ought to get out of here, you know. Things go on here I couldn’t describe.’
We walk on, my arm around her, back towards the house.