Despite the uncertainty of her situation, Claire’s schedule was busier than it had ever been. It seemed that she spent every moment she could at the hospital and the rest helping Maudie at the Patels’. Mrs Patel’s pregnancy was so advanced that she found it difficult to stoop or even stand for long. Claire found herself doing all of the unpacking and shelf stocking, as well as carrying and breaking down the cardboard boxes that arrived, it seemed, by the dozen every day. It was clear that business had picked up, but Mrs Patel hadn’t offered any more money, nor did Claire expect any. The problem was that without anything coming in from her knitting work, the cash that Claire had left was quickly dwindling. It was too bad she hadn’t been able to get a refund on the Nice trip. It was clearer every day that her plan to stay on in London had been foolish and it was only a matter of time before she had to return to New York.
On Mrs Venables’s eleventh day in hospital, Claire came home a little early from her visit to her, as she was so tired. There was a phone message waiting for her – apparently in the short time since Claire had left, Mrs Venables had been showing sudden signs of great improvement. Claire made her way to the bedroom, barely noticing the boxes and disarray in the rest of the apartment. She sank into bed and it was only the next morning, when she emerged from her room that the significance of the confusion in the living room made an impact. Imogen had begun packing up! The tears that Claire had been holding in check for over a week finally couldn’t be restrained and she cried, loudly and very messily.
After she’d mopped up her face, bathed, dressed and forced herself to swallow some tea and toast she felt better. Then she noticed the envelope on the table. It was beside two cartons, half obscured by newspaper and tissue paper. She felt irritation. Couldn’t Im leave her mail in her own room? Claire wondered. It wouldn’t be too much to ask. But, she supposed it would. Living with a roommate, it seemed, was only slightly better than living with her mother and Jerry. Maybe someday she would have a place of her own.
She could see the letter was from Abigail, whose handwriting had already become familiar.
At last we’ve gotten some good weather and my flower boxes are thriving. I don’t know why everybody here doesn’t have flower boxes. They certainly do in London and they must be magnificent. Such a civilized feature.
I must tell you that Michael Wainwright, who has really been through a rough few months, is quite persistent about your address. I have had to be curt with him. But I thought you should know that I have, reluctantly, given it to him. I think he’s feeling very sorry for himself right now, but I wouldn’t have a thing to do with him until he learns how to feel compassion for others. In his case I’m afraid that might take a few more decades, but I, of course, am pessimistic. Brady continues to recover. When I take him to the park he runs around like a puppy. The surgery has been quite miraculous. If only he were a puppy again. I cringe when I realize he’s twelve years old and that in the next few years … well, the problem with loving anything is how it eventually dies or leaves you. Best to be a Buddhist, don’t you think?
Claire couldn’t believe that Michael ever even thought of her. She wondered if Abigail was exaggerating. Perhaps he wanted her little box back. She picked it up and ran her fingers over the smooth enamel. When this you see, remember me. She put it down and decided not to take advice from a box.
She glanced in the mirror, ignoring her pretty knick-knacks and just ran a brush through her hair. She would take the bus to the hospital, see how Mrs Venables was and then come back to straighten out this mess as best she could.
She opened the top drawer of her bureau and took out the envelope of five-pound notes she had stashed there. She counted them carefully, and then she counted them again. Claire shouldn’t have paid her mother back because now she couldn’t believe how little there was left. If a single ticket to New York was two hundred pounds she had only … Claire shuddered. The reality was becoming more and more clear. She would have to pack up, go back to Tottenville and figure out what kind of life – if any – she could build on that Tottering Foundation. Of course, now that Jerry was gone, her mother would welcome her, but it would be only because she was lonely and needed mortgage money. Claire was not foolish enough to believe otherwise and if, by some astonishing chance, another man appeared on Mrs Bilsop’s horizon, Claire knew she’d be lucky to keep her room. Perhaps, in time, she could save up and get her own apartment.
Putting thoughts of her future out of her mind, Claire set off for the hospital. As she approached the entrance she found her step quickening. What if Mrs Venables had worsened? What if Imogen – never very attentive to other people’s lives – had gotten the message wrong? When she stepped out of the lift she found herself almost running down the hall.
As she came to the corner leading to the neurology ward someone came round it from the opposite direction and they literally bumped one another. Claire dropped her purse, he scrabbled on the floor to pick it up, and as they turned to one another, both of their faces expressed the same surprise. It was Nigel and though Claire still felt coldly toward him, she felt relief flood her.
‘Your mother …’
‘Claire!’
They both stopped speaking. Claire rubbed her shoulder where she had collided with him and watched, with a nasty secret satisfaction, the red spot on his cheek where she had bumped him begin to swell. Nigel handed her purse back to her. ‘I’ve very glad to see you,’ he said. And to her astonishment he took her hand. ‘Mother has been talking about you without stopping since you left yesterday.’
‘Your mother is talking?’ Claire asked.
‘I can’t stop her. The nurses are gob-smacked. Even the neurologist says he hasn’t seen progress like this before, at least not in a woman her age. And yesterday evening she wanted knitting needles. Can you believe it?’
Claire nodded. With no one but Nigel to talk to, she would want to distract herself with knitting too. But the news was too wonderful to continue being small-minded. ‘Is she awake?’ Claire asked.
‘The day sister just took her down to physiotherapy. I was going to nip down for a cup of coffee. Care to join me?’
Actually, in her current frame of mind she couldn’t think of anything she’d like to do less, but she supposed that, since Nigel was offering an olive branch, she should drink a cup of oil with him.
And the coffee was oily. Though she’d fallen for everything British, Claire had to admit hospital cafés were as bad in London as they were in New York. Nigel had brought a ‘white coffee’ for her, a black one for himself, and rustled up a plate of biscuits so hard that they could probably be used to scratch their initials on the dusty window beside them. Once he took a chair opposite her at the little corner table an embarrassed silence set in. The main thing they had in common so far was, after all, Mrs Venables.
The silence was getting prolonged and more than simply awkward. ‘Do you take sugar? I’m so sorry. I forgot to ask. Shall I get you some?’
Nigel’s exaggerated politeness reminded Claire of her theory that he was socially awkward. Of course, as she was too, she found it a most annoying trait.
‘Mother can’t go back home after discharge,’ Nigel announced.
‘Found a purchaser for your building?’ Claire asked with an insincere smile, then felt guilty when she saw Nigel’s face fall. He wasn’t really so bad. In fact, he was probably a better son than most. She wondered why he was unmarried; perhaps he too was a homosexual. She had learned to her discomfort that it was something she couldn’t judge here.
‘As a matter of fact, no. Besides, I can’t sell it without Mother’s approval. So I think what is going to have to happen is that she goes into special housing, and perhaps a nursing home first for rehabilitation.’
‘I can’t imagine your mother taking orders from someone else, never mind having to live someplace other than her own flat. She loves it there,’ Claire said in Mrs Venables’s defense.
‘She’ll have to accept the change. There’s no other choice.’ Nigel took a sip of his coffee.
As the gray light that filtered through the grimy window fell on him, he looked aristocratic and, as Claire had noticed before, rather handsome. His fine forehead and pale hair emphasized his eyes, which were as blue as his mother’s, and though his lips were thin, he did have an attractive smile – when he chose to smile.
He was trying to smile now. ‘She’ll adjust to the situation in time.’ But as Claire stared at him without a response he gave up. ‘Look, I don’t expect you to like me; well, perhaps I do but that’s just bloody arrogance. I know I’ve been beastly, and I’m very much ashamed of myself. May I offer a sincere apology?’ He looked at her again and now his pale face flushed with what she thought might be embarrassment. The pink set off his eyes. God, she thought, I’m a truly desperate woman when I start to think that Nigel Venables is sexy.
She reached across the table and patted his hand, then withdrew her own. ‘Apology accepted,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about it. You were just being protective.’
‘No. I was being an ass. I still don’t know much about you but you’ve been marvelous.’
Claire was more than surprised – she was stunned by Nigel’s admission. Her life might not be good, but at least it was interesting, she thought. Far more interesting than it had ever been. Oh, she would hate to give up all of this for a commute on the subway.
‘I wanted to thank you for all that you’ve done for my mother,’ Nigel continued. ‘She really can’t stop talking about you. And she’s even eager to get back to the shop. I’m still not sure she’ll be able to manage it, but well, is there anything I can … do for you?’
Claire looked down at the plate in front of her and then nodded. ‘You can find some biscuits that are edible,’ she said.
‘My dear!’ Mrs Venables said from a bed that was surrounded by cards and so many arrangements of flowers that she looked like a mannequin in one of the store window displays in Knightsbridge. She certainly still slurred her words, but she would be understandable to anyone, now, not just Claire. The improvement was overwhelming and Claire went to the old woman’s bedside and took her weakened hand in both of her own. ‘You look wonderful,’ she said. ‘Someone’s done your hair.’
Mrs Venables nodded. Her blue eyes were bright with mischief, and both of them focused on Claire. ‘I tried to do it myself but couldn’t manage the hairpins … yet. So Nigel helped me.’ Claire saw her mouth tremble, but she thought it was with a suppressed laugh rather than a neurological tremor. ‘He was quite good. Here is my news. The doctor has told me I can be discharged soon.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ both Claire and Nigel said.
‘Yes. I’ve been lucky. He’s going to talk to Nigel. I shall have to have a visiting nurse at first, and more speech and physiotherapy, but I can do quite a lot of it at home. And I’ll make Nigel drop his silly idea that I can’t manage in the flat.’
‘Great. That’s great. So why don’t you rest now?’
‘I will,’ she agreed. ‘But perhaps you can check the shop. Just to see if there are any inquiries.’ The old woman closed her eyes and Claire thought, with a pang, of closing the shop. But of course it would have to be done. As Claire watched Mrs Venables’s face go slack with exhaustion she felt her own fatigue overtake her.
‘Let me take you home,’ Nigel said. ‘You live near here, don’t you?’
Claire let him take her arm, lead her to the lift and to the taxi rank. He helped her into the cab and she closed her eyes. She must have actually fallen asleep because when she opened her eyes the taxi was turning off the Brompton Road close to the shop. ‘I’m two streets down and just to the left,’ she said, slightly embarrassed. Nigel was discreetly looking away.
‘Oh, good,’ he said and tapped the plastic screen between them and the driver. He gave the direction and they pulled up in front of Imogen’s building.
‘Thank you very much for the ride,’ Claire told him.
He reached across her and opened the door. ‘You’re very welcome. You mind if I take the taxi on to my office?’
‘Of course not,’ she said.
‘I’ll be going back to see my mother this evening. Would you like me to pick you up?’
Claire shook her head. ‘I’m just going to run a few errands and then I’ll go back this afternoon.’
‘Perhaps I’ll see you then.’
She smiled and nodded and stepped out of the cab. She waved him off then turned back to the house. It was only then that she noticed a man was standing on the doorstep. His broad back was toward her. For a moment she thought it must be Malcolm, but this man was much taller and his suit fit. Then he turned around. To her utter surprise, it was Michael Wainwright.