sounds a funny mixture,’ said the old man without looking up, ‘heart trouble and then pneumonia. A funny mixture. She was quite well yesterday.’ He began to cry, very quietly, like a woman can: the tears welling up in his eyes.
The doctor, who had already picked up one of his bags, put it down again and leant back in the chair. ‘Can you make us a cup of tea?’ he said
While the daughter was making the tea the two men spoke about the orchard at the back and this year’s apples. When the daughter was there, they spoke about the father’s rheumatism. After the tea the doctor went.
The next morning was another autumn morning like the preceding. Every leaf of each tree seemed separate. The sunshine, filtered through a tree in the orchard, played on the floor of the old woman’s bedroom. She clambered out of bed and suffered a second attack. The doctor arrived within a quarter of an hour. Her lips were purple, her face clay-coloured. She died quickly, her hands very still.
In the parlour the old man rocked on his feet. The doctor deliberately did not put out a hand to steady him. Instead he faced him. The older man was the taller by nine inches. The doctor said quietly, his eyes extra wide behind his spectacles, ‘It would have been worse for her if she’d lived. It would have been worse.’
He might have said that there have been kings and presidents of republics who have never recovered from the death of their wives. He might have said that death is the condition of life. He might have said that man is indivisible and that, in his own view, this was the only sense in which death could have no dominion.
But whatever he said at that moment, the old man would have continued to rock on his feet, until the daughter lowered him into his chair in front of the unlit fire.
Only her feet betray her. There is something about the way she walks on her feet – a kind of irresponsibility towards them – which is still quite childish. Her figure is 36–25–36.
She was crying when she came into the surgery.
‘What’s wrong Duckie?’
‘I just feel sort of miserable.’
She sat like other girls had sat there crying because they thought they were pregnant. To make it easier for her, the doctor slipped the question between several others.
‘What’s getting you down?’
No answer.
‘Sore throat?’
‘Not now.’
‘Water-works all right?’
She nodded.
‘Have you got a temperature?’
She shook her head.
‘Periods regular?’
‘Yeah.’
‘When was your last one?’
‘Last week.’
The doctor paused.
‘Do you remember that rash you used to get on your tum? Has it ever come back?’
‘No.’
He leant forward in his chair towards her.
‘You just feel weepy?’
She inclined her head farther towards her own consoling bosom.
‘Did Mum and Dad put you up to come to me?’
‘No, I came myself.’
‘Even having your hair dyed didn’t make you feel better?’
She laughed a little because he had noticed. ‘It did for a while.’
The doctor took her temperature, looked at her throat and told her to stay in bed for two days. Then he resumed the conversation.
‘Do you like working in that laundry?’
‘It’s a job.’
‘What about the other girls there?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you get on with them?’
‘You get stopped if they find you talking.’
‘Have you thought of doing anything else?’
‘What can I do?’
‘What would you like to do?’
‘I’d like to do secretarial work.’
‘Who would you like to be secretary to?’
She laughed and shook her head.
Her face was grubby with tear stains. But around her eyes and in the muzzle of her face which terminates in her full lip-sticked lips there is evidence of the same force that has filled out her bust and her hips. She is nubile in everything except her education and her chances.
‘When you’re a bit better I’ll keep you off work for a few days, if you like, and you can go to the Labour Exchange and find out how you can get trained. There are all kinds of training schemes.’
‘Are there?’ she said moonily.
‘How did you do at school?’
‘I wasn’t any good.’
‘Did you take O-levels?’
‘No. I left.’
‘But you weren’t stupid were you?’ He asked this as though if she admitted that she was, it would somehow reflect badly on him.
‘No, not stupid.’
‘Well,’ he said.
‘It’s terrible that laundry. I hate it.’
‘It’s no good being sorry for yourself. If I give you a week off, will you really use it?’
She nodded, chewing her damp handkerchief.
‘You can come up again on Wednesday and I’ll phone the Labour Exchange and we’ll talk about what they say.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, beginning to cry again.
‘Don’t be sorry. The fact that you’re crying means you’ve got imagination. If you didn’t have imagination, you wouldn’t feel so bad. Now go to bed and stay there tomorrow.’
Through the surgery window he saw her walking up the lane to the common, to the house in which he had delivered her sixteen years ago. After she had turned the corner, he continued to stare at
