Anna was already at the hospital, standing by Patrick’s bed with her back to the door. Audrey was in the wheelchair beside her. Anna’s dress was sleeveless: the backs of her arms gleamed palely. Flesh looked vulnerable among the metal of the beds and the machines. The nurse had kept Carol at the door. Walking on alone, Kit was conscious of each step advancing her into this still, quiet room in which the machines flickered secretly, in which the light itself was indistinctly grey. Around the bed, the adults were stopped, purposeless. They had only their hand movements, which looked too large; like an actor’s they did nothing, only showed feeling. Kit dreaded more than anything how, any moment now, they would turn, they would look at her, they would catch her up in that atmosphere of feeling that cut through walls, that had no end. She heard again the phone ringing from the depths of the house.
‘Kit!’ It actually hurt, how tightly her mother hugged her, the corner of a zip pressing into the skin under one eye. Past Anna’s shoulder, Kit saw Treen. This moment, when she thought that no one could see her, Treen’s mouth had collapsed. The skin by her nose was pinched; new wrinkles dropped from the side of her mouth down to her jaw. Grief was frightening in its ugliness, its distortion— Kit closed her eyes, breathed in her mother’s insistent familiar perfume, saw the plain glass bottle which stood always on Anna’s bathroom shelf, which drew to itself the mirror’s reflected light. Anna took hold of Kit’s shoulders and looked directly into her face. ‘But darling where did you sleep?’
Kit saw, behind Anna, the nurse stand up. In her white dress she was hardly more individual than the machines. Her white rubber-soled shoes squeaked on the floor. She stopped behind Treen and said: ‘This is intensive care.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. We’ll all go.’
The nurse, instantly placated, said, ‘You’re welcome to use one of the family rooms down the hall.’
So they were leaving already. What Kit had been dreading became suddenly something she could not miss: she faced the bed. Her grandfather’s hands were in the same position on the sheets. Those fingers had tapped the mother-of-pearl box—how long ago? Impossible to believe that that body, so dense and pale, the hands with their hairs springing from the backs of his fingers, was a body only; that he would not, at any sudden noise, open his eyes and sit up. Along the sides of his throat, up his cheek, and over his upper lip, white stubble glistened. It seemed strange to Kit that hair was still forcing itself out through his skin. She said to herself, he is dying. It made no difference: the words went echoing off. She never had known anyone to die before. The difference between living and dying was fascinatingly abstract; it had nothing to do with that body—person—under the blue-white sheet.
In the sudden brightness of the hall, Audrey’s hand went fumbling out from the wheelchair. ‘They won’t wake him up,’ she said in a wavering, bewildered voice. She caught Anna’s wrist and tugged at it. ‘You’re here now. They’ll listen to you. You tell them. Tell them to wake him up.’
Anna and Treen exchanged glances. ‘Alright Mum,’ said Anna. ‘We’ll just have our tea first.’
Mum: the word reverberated. Because that was not possible— Kit pictured the pinch-faced girl who had stared down at her out of the pine tree. But the picture was transparent, unreal. Her mother, walking straight-backed beside her, banished the child she had been.
‘Here we are,’ said Treen. A square low room off the hall: two sofas and a low table filled it: impossible to move in any direction without thinking of bumped shins.
Audrey’s wheelchair stopped just inside the door. Beside her, a corner shelf held an electric kettle, a bowl of tea bags, sugar sachets, instant pull-top UHT milk containers, a line of anonymous white coffee cups. With an exclamation of disgust, Anna went across to pull up the venetian blinds. Plastic, grey with dust—one of them was wonky—they opened only halfway, revealing the far edge of the car park and farther off, the terracotta-tiled roofs of houses across the road.
Treen said: ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
Kit sat on the edge of the sofa where other people had sat yesterday. Somebody else had been dying then. There was a pause while they listened to the kettle coming to the boil. Anna, staring down into the car park, kept coiling and uncoiling the blind cord around her finger. Kit, seeing Treen pass Anna her cup of tea, could have caught Treen’s sleeve and warned her: not like that. Kit knew—till now, she had not known that she knew—how shows of humility, anxious kindness, infuriated Anna, who saw in them only traps. Now Anna took the cup, glanced down into it without changing her expression—as if to say, rooms like this, cups like these, had nothing to do with her. Even as Kit registered this knowledge of her mother, the strangeness of seeing her here, with a sister and a mother, in this ugly bright room, made Kit feel shy and formal. This was not the mother she knew. Treen, who had changed out of the black suit that she had worn to the funeral, was more familiar, dressed in the jeans and shirt that Kit had packed.
Audrey with a series of petulant small grunts eased herself up in her wheelchair. Catching sight of Anna at the window, she leant forwards confidingly. ‘It’s because we’re public patients. They won’t do anything for us.’
‘I’ll talk to them.’ Anna set her tea untasted on the table. She said to Kit: ‘You still haven’t told me where you slept last night.’
‘Oh…’ Kit looked at Treen to answer.
‘Kit had a night at Carol’s,’ Treen said brightly. ‘Our neighbours, they bought the Naylor’s place. Kit’s friendly with the daughter, aren’t you Kit.’
Kit nodded.
Treen looked blandly at a framed photograph of mountains. ‘They do try to make it nice,’ she said, and yawned hugely.
‘They’ve screwed the picture to the wall,’ said Anna. ‘Who do they think would nick it?’ She put on a voice: ‘A little memento of when my father died.’ She looked at her watch. ‘God! Are they even going to tell us what’s happening?’
‘The doctor said we have to wait and see,’ said Treen.
‘The doctor. When did you speak to him?’
‘It’s a her. Last night. She did some test—’
‘What sort of test?’
‘Oh I don’t know.’ Dropping her chin, Treen pressed the tips of her fingers against her eyebrows. ‘They’re worried the blood supply to his brain was cut off.’
‘So he’s brain dead?’
‘We have to wait and see.’
‘When will they know?’
Dropping her hands, Treen looked full at Anna. The light from the window lit up her face, showing the papery dry skin, white hairs sprouting stiffly from her chin. She was at some final reach of feeling. Exhaustion, sorrow made her monumental. That moment, Kit would have reached out wonderingly to touch her: she was not herself, or anyone.
‘They didn’t say.’
Audrey’s teacup fell with a soft thump onto the carpet. Anna cried out…
‘It’s alright,’ said Treen. ‘She’s just asleep.’
Audrey’s head had slumped down and sideways oddly on her chest. Kit knelt to pick up the cup and saucer, trying not to look at Audrey’s ankles swelling out of her slippers, the skin blotched with blue-brown bruises. With a tissue Kit started scrubbing at the dark streak on the carpet.
‘Just leave it,’ said Anna irritably. She was watching Audrey. ‘Did they give her a bed?’
‘They tried. She wouldn’t get into it. She kept saying “But it’s my husband who’s unwell.” The nurse said to make sure she has a walk today.’
‘There’s no point her even being here.’
‘Oh! But she wants to be—’
‘It’ll kill her too,’ said Anna. Abruptly, she clutched an arm across her chest and made a sound like a guttural cough. Kit only worked out that she was crying when Treen stood up and, clumsily reaching over the edge of the sofa, put an arm around her sister’s shoulders. After that first cough, Anna’s crying was soundless, but her whole body shook…‘Don’t.’ She pulled away from Treen, ran her fingers under her eyes. Their lower rims, and two patches high on her cheeks, were a damp bright red. ‘If I start I won’t stop.’ She breathed in and out. ‘No, I’ll get a coffee. Kit will come with me.’ She took hold of Kit’s wrist where it rested on the sofa.
Kit looked down at that hand. Through it she could feel like an electric current her mother’s agitation. Her arm stiffened with the effort of holding still, of not drawing back. It was wrong, she only felt, it was dreadful: this wanting. She concentrated on her mother’s hand, so pale it showed a blue tracery of veins. The nails, kept short, were painted gloss purple. That moment, the detail was consoling: it belonged to that other world in which this bleak room, this grimy sofa, its upholstery worn to a plastic shine, had no place.
They had not closed the door. A nurse standing in the hall knocked and, without pausing, stepped into the room. At once Anna withdrew her hand and stood up. At the same moment Kit drew back, as though guiltily, and folded her hands in her lap.
‘Now we’re all here,’ said the nurse, propping on the arm of the sofa. Her body, straight-backed, kept unnaturally still while she turned her head and smiled at them and spoke. Her hands were placed in her lap; her legs, in their white stockings, were crossed.
‘Mum’s just dropped off,’ said Treen.
The nurse nodded. ‘Mum needs a walk today. We don’t want her leaving in a wheelchair.’ She did not look at her watch though, lifting her chin, she might have: they all became conscious of time.
‘Mum…’ Treen, kneeling, shook Audrey’s knee. ‘The nurse is here.’
Audrey lifted her head and stared around, mumbling with her tongue against her bottom lip. While she swung her head, the blindness of her eyes drew back: she started looking. She saw the nurse and sat up, clasping the arms of her wheelchair. She said: ‘Why won’t you do anything?’
The nurse’s smile tightened.
Treen said: ‘This has all been very sudden.’
The nurse took Audrey’s hand and brought her face close. ‘Your husband has suffered a heart attack.’ Without losing her smile, fixing her eyes on Audrey’s, she nodded twice. ‘He’s very sick. We think his heart attack may have stopped the blood supply to his brain.’ She touched the side of her forehead.
Audrey jutted her bottom lip out and looked at Anna over the nurse’s shoulder. ‘They talk and talk,’ she said. ‘They don’t do anything.’
The nurse straightened up, releasing Audrey’s hand. Her patience was deliberate; it had nothing to do with them. Kit wondered suddenly how they looked to her, and noticed a butter stain from breakfast on her jeans.
‘We can talk later,’ the nurse said. ‘There’s no rush.’ She pushed her shoulders back, visibly took a breath. ‘What I would ask you to think about, though, is what your father would have wanted.’
Treen put her hand up to her throat. Her fingers tightened around her neck as if she could by that suppress the low moaning sound she was making. ‘I’m sorry.’ After a moment, she brought her hand down and held it pressed under her other hand on her lap. ‘The doctor said to wait and see.’
The nurse held her smile. ‘This is a very difficult, very emotional time.’
‘You want the bed for someone else,’ said Anna.
The impersonality of the room made Anna’s rudeness more shocking. Everything in it was strange: its torn-off milk containers, its used cups in the sink.
The nurse only nodded thoughtfully, as though the conversation had gone well. ‘I’ll leave you in peace,’ she said. Inside the door she stopped. ‘Was there anything you wanted to ask me?’
Anna said: ‘Yes. Where can you get a decent coffee here?’