Dorrie complained that her sight was cloudy and I made the optician’s appointment on that particular date for both our sakes. Keep busy, something else to think about – Paul’s ‘royal’ birthday. And in the afternoon, tea at Sheila’s with the Creak and Groaners. I’ll barely have time to stop all day.
Dorrie is waiting for me in her chair. When I arrive, she makes moves to get up, struggling, pushing down on the arms.
‘Can you manage?’ I hurry over to help, seeing how much she is shaking with the effort. Looping an arm under hers to pull her up, I can feel her bones actually creaking and how thin and insubstantial she is, the frame of something which has lost its substance.
‘We ought to get you one of those chairs,’ I say. ‘The ones that help you get up. You press a button and—’
Dorrie gives a dismissive flick of her spare wrist. ‘I don’t want one of them things. Throw me half-way across the room one of them would.’
‘I think you can adjust them,’ I’m saying, but she’s shaking her head, the stubborn old girl.
But it really hit me this morning. Since I have been coming to see Dorrie regularly, we’ve just sat and talked. Have I seen her get up and move about, even once? How could I have been so stupid, so wrapped up in myself that I have not tried to find out how things really are for her? She, dignified and stubborn to the last, has probably not wanted us to know what a struggle her life is. And there is part of me that does not want to know. I want to think that this loving old lady will just go on and on . . . I can’t bear the thought of her not being there any more . . . I am awash with guilt. I haven’t even read the stuff in that envelope she gave me because, to my shame, I have hidden it away and forgotten all about it.
‘Ah – that’s it,’ Dorrie says valiantly, once upright, though she doesn’t seem steady on her feet.
Questions nag at my mind. How is Dorrie getting up and down the stairs? Is she struggling to get dressed? Has no one from the hospital asked or offered help? But Ian and I are her closest family and even we have not thought to ask.
‘D’you think you’re going to be able to manage?’ I ask gently.
‘I’ll be all right, bab.’ Dorrie looks down, bracing herself. She holds out a clawed hand. ‘Pass me my stick.’
As I help Dorrie into her old mac, looping a scarf round her neck, my mind speeds over needs and possibilities: a Zimmer frame, a wheelchair, one of those stair lifts. The bathroom has already got some handles and she has a shower. But there’s a step up into it . . . I don’t say any more to her then though, not wanting to chivvy Dorrie with all of it at once.
We inch down the front path to the car, Dorrie a sharp-boned weight on my arm. Ian got a lift to work today so that I could have the car. I help Dorrie fold herself slowly into the seat, lean down and strap her in, pull her coat straight over her knees.
‘Thanks, Jo.’ She sits upright, steeling herself, then looks up at me. ‘Never get old.’
‘Dorrie,’ I say brightly as we head out to the main road. ‘How about we get one of those stairlifts put in for you?’
Dorrie’s head shoots round. ‘A Stannah?’ I’m surprised she is so clued up. ‘Oh, I don’t need one of them things. I can get up and down the stairs. I’m slow, but I can do it.’
There are times when it’s better not to argue. I’ll talk to Ian about it all later.
We get through the whole business of parking and getting her into the optician’s, an epic journey across a small patch of tarmac which suddenly seems ocean wide, Dorrie pressing down on my arm. Seeing Dorrie in her own house is one thing. Outside she seems shrunken and terribly frail.
It takes her a while to get her breath back in the waiting room. Sitting in the bright, white space, she seems somehow exotic, like a little old owl brought indoors.
‘Nice and clean in here.’
‘When did you last have an eye test, Dorrie?’ I enjoy the feeling of sitting beside her. It’s a time for a little chat, mother and daughter. Almost.
‘Oh,’ she says vaguely. ‘I don’t know. Years back.’
After a comfortable silence, she says, ‘Ian all right?’
‘He came in to see you on Sunday, didn’t he?’
She nods. ‘But is he?’
‘I think so.’ I hesitated. ‘As much as he ever is. It’s not always easy to tell.’
‘That’s what I meant, bab. He bottles things up.’
I know we are both thinking about the same thing.
‘It’s twenty-five years today since you took him home, in’t it?’ Dorrie says very softly, with a sideways tilt to her head.
‘Twenty-four,’ I whisper.
‘Oh. Oh, yes. Twenty-four.’ She nods slowly.
‘Mrs Stefani – are you ready to come through?’ A young woman in dark-framed glasses has emerged through the door facing us.
Back at the house, I make tea and a sandwich for each of us, slices of gleaming ham, wafers of tomato, no skins, the way Dorrie likes it.
‘Cataract operations are very straightforward – she said, didn’t she?’
We are each side of the fire, Sweep sprawled out between us. I can see now what I have not chosen to see before – the milkiness of Dorrie’s right eye.
‘Ar – I s’pect so.’ She takes a sip of tea, hands shaking.
‘You don’t need to worry, Dorrie – really. It’s all done in five minutes. They do loads every day.’
‘I’m not worried.’
I follow her every move – just in case – as she painstakingly returns the mug to the table and stares down at the brown, saggy hearthrug. Her fire is an old-fashioned electric thing, hot coils of orange with thin silver bars in front.
She seems preoccupied and I assume it’s because she is fretting over her eyes. In fact, I start to wonder again if something else is going on, something physical. I quickly finish my last mouthful of sandwich, lay the plate on the floor. I wonder whether to ask my mother-in-law if she’s feeling all right. She doesn’t much like questions of that sort. I must go home and read her thing, whatever it is – her collection of papers. She wants me to read it, to know something, and I haven’t even bothered to get it out yet. I’m fretting, guilty and worried, when Dorrie looks across at me suddenly, apparently lively as a cricket.
‘Put the telly on for me before you go, will you, bab? There’s one of them old films on. Pass us the remote control and I’ll settle in for the afternoon.’