Chloe dozes by Helen’s bed. She is short of sleep. She wakes with a start.
‘Poor little Midge,’ Marjorie says from the bed where she lies, as if she too were a patient. She is crying.
Chloe Why don’t you cry for yourself, for a change? Why choose something ten years old?
Helen’s eyelids flutter but do not open.
Marjorie If I started I might never stop. All the things I should have done, and didn’t do. Wasn’t it strange the way I called in at Midge’s flat that morning making myself late. I never had before. Too late to help, all the same. I drove round and round the block first, like some kind of zombie. If I’d only obeyed the impulse, and not struggled against it.
Chloe It’s always like that when people die. If only.
Marjorie And poor little Kevin opened the door. He could just reach. There was nothing I could do, except what I did. Call the ambulance and wait for you. But I think something else was expected of me, and all I did was just go back to work.
Chloe What do you mean, something else?
Marjorie I don’t know. Just being there. Or at least finding out for certain whether she was going to live or die. I didn’t really want to know. Such cowardice. And I shouldn’t have used her in that documentary. It can’t have helped. All the things one does, and shouldn’t.
Chloe What else?
Marjorie Handing Ben that light-bulb. I was angry with him. He was going to see his mother and I knew she didn’t like me, so I made him reach too far. I hoped he’d fall off. And the other thing, the awful thing – I didn’t send mother a telegram when father came home. I don’t think I did. I went to the post office to send it, and I know I wrote it out, and then I think I just screwed it up, Chloe.
Chloe Think?
Marjorie You know how every penny counted, in those days. It was send the telegram, or buy the butter. I hated margarine. Everyone called me Marge at school, especially you, Chloe.
Chloe I’m sorry.
So she had. Her own name, Chloe, rare and strange, had elevated her from common status. To call Marjorie Marge was to demote her, and when she could, she did.
Marjorie Too late now, I just thought I’d mention it. Anyway it wasn’t that. I wanted father for myself. I thought mother would be bad for him. And he died.
Chloe Marjorie, have you told Helen’s friends that she’s in hospital?
Marjorie (Ignoring her) And the other thing, the Frognal house. I should never have stayed there. Patrick was right, it was me haunting myself, sending myself messages. Get out, forget it, forget everything, start again. Stop trying to wring blood out of stones. My blood, staining those stairs. How strange it all is. I should have been glad when mother changed the locks and kept me out, but I wasn’t.
A house, thinks Chloe, a home. If I only had somewhere to go, would I take the children, leave Oliver? No.
Chloe (Persistent) Marjorie, who else have you told about Helen being here?
Marjorie No-one. Just you and Grace.
Chloe opens Helen’s crocodile handbag, which stands on the bedside locker, and searches it for an address book. What sacrilege! Rifling mother’s handbag. Will Chloe grieve for Helen when she is dead; and if then, why not now? Or will it be pity for herself she feels; another’s death, by implication, being her own. We must live in the expectation of death, Chloe thinks, for ourselves and others. Only in the light of our ending, do our lives make any kind of sense. Helen’s handbag is neat and clean. A little vanity case; powder-case and rouge. A lace handkerchief, amazingly white. A note-case, decently filled. A suède purse, unscuffed and unstained. A sachet of eau-de-Cologne. A dentist’s card. The address book, with a tiny pencil tucked down the spine, and the pages neatly filled with tiny writing. An old lady’s handbag, but full of expectation.
Marjorie accepts the address book.
Chloe Marjorie, when I was sleeping just now, did I snore?
Marjorie What a funny thing to ask. No, of course you didn’t.
Chloe It’s the kind of thing one never knows.
Marjorie leaves the room in search of a telephone. Chloe is left alone with Helen, and is afraid. And indeed, as if relieved of the weight of Marjorie’s presence, Helen’s eyelids flutter, and lift, and Helen stares full at Chloe. She speaks, in a lilting fashion, in the manner of some thirty years ago.
Helen I wish you’d do something about your hair, Marjorie. Why can’t you be more like Chloe Evans? She’s always so neat.
Her eyelids fall again. She sighs, exhausted. Two nurses, one black, one white, both tired, come in with a trolley and set about transferring Helen from her comfortable bed on to its uncomfortable surface.
Chloe Where are you taking her?
Nurse Are you the next-of-kin?
Chloe No.
Nurse Well, I don’t suppose it matters. Just down to X-ray.
Helen’s bed is empty when Marjorie returns. She brings Grace with her. Grace has been visiting Patrick. She wears faded blue jeans, a navy shirt and a denim jacket. Her eyes are still puffy from the outbursts of the morning, and her face seems lax and flushed. She is growing old, thinks Chloe. But Grace sits on the edge of the bed and swings her legs like a girl, and is undaunted.
Grace I’m sure it’s all right, Marjorie. They wouldn’t be X-raying her if they thought she was going to pop off any moment. Patrick says people live for years with brain tumours. He says he thinks perhaps he has one himself. I wouldn’t be surprised. What an excuse for bad behaviour! Please sir, it’s me tumour. He’s looking dreadful. I’m sure he’s got scurvy. He’s living off kippers and tea and has at least six chains on the door to keep out robbers. You should see the ulcers on his gums. He wants his washing back, Marjorie, clean or dirty. He doesn’t trust you.
Marjorie I have other things to think about.
Grace I only told you to amuse you. I nearly brought him with me. You know how he loves hospitals.
Marjorie Yes, well he never loved mother.
Grace I suppose not. Why are you looking so glum, Chloe? Do you want me to go away?
Chloe No. I wish you’d be more responsible about Stanhope, that’s all.
Grace Truth is truth, you’re always saying so. Actually, I have to agree with you. Patrick isn’t much cop as a father. I’d forgotten. His legs are in a dreadful state. His varicose veins have ulcerated. He’s drinking much too much, but at least it should lower his sperm count. Anyway I hope so. Tell Stanhope I made a mistake, or something. I’d got my months muddled up. Set him free to marry Kestrel.
Chloe Why should he want to do that?
Grace Well, you know what life is like. It’s the kind of thing that happens.
Chloe You don’t want Stanhope to live with you?
Grace Good God, no. I’m not fit. You’re always saying so. Anyway Sebastian’s on his way home. The beach was awash, he says. I wish he’d rung this morning, before I’d seen Patrick. Marjorie, Patrick says if the Frognal house is ever unlocked, can he move back in?
Marjorie No.
Grace He’s angry because you haven’t returned his washing. He thinks you’ve stolen it. He can’t go on living down there. He needs some help.
Marjorie He won’t get it from me, any more. Life’s too short.
Grace Why not? He’s been in such a state since Midge died.
Chloe Good.
Grace You think you’re a saint, Chloe, but really you’re a devil. If anyone’s to blame for Midge dying, it’s you.
Chloe Me?
Grace Yes. If you hadn’t said you’d look after the children, Midge couldn’t have done it. She’d be alive and grizzling today. You’re a very dangerous, person, Chloe. People who stand about waiting for other people to fall to bits so they can pick up the pieces ought to be locked up. They encourage disintegration. It’s time you learned to enjoy yourself, Chloe; you’re too dangerous as a martyr.
Do what you want, not what you ought. Isn’t that what Chloe once shouted at poor Gwyneth? What progress can there be, from generation to generation, if daughters do as mothers do? Will Imogen anguish over Chloe, as Chloe does over her own mama? To understand, forgive, endure. What kind of lesson is that for daughters? Better to end like Helen, unforgiving and unforgiven. Better to live like Grace, at least alive.
A nurse, pale and shaken, comes to summon the next-of-kin, identified after some confusion as Marjorie, not Grace, to the social worker’s office. Chloe barely notices. She, Midge’s destruction, not her salvation?
Grace Mind you, I’m only the girl who got sent to her room for hoping that Hitler would win the war. Anything for a change. I have at least kept my energy, by caring about nothing, or not for longer than a couple of hours. Morality is very devitalizing, Chloe. Look what you’ve done to Oliver, by being so much better than him. He hasn’t done a decent day’s work since you married him.
Marjorie comes back from the social worker’s office, ashen. She smooths the pillows of Helen’s bed and replaces the counterpane tidily. Helen is dead. Her heart stopped on the trolley on the way to the X-ray department, and whether motivated by kindness or enervated by exhaustion, no-one ran for the resuscitation equipment. They walked instead, and by the time help came it was too late.
‘They should never have moved her,’ says Marjorie. ‘You should have stopped them, Chloe. Poor little mother.’
Marjorie cries, for herself.