On a trolley nearby lay the remains of lunch: a greenish soup and a pallid blancmange, barely touched. Someone had placed a vase of artificial flowers, blowsy dahlias in paintbox colors, on the bedside cabinet.
Her eyes were closed, but at Jean’s approach she opened them. It took her a minute to focus and draw her dry lips into a smile of recognition.
“I thought you might come, sooner or later.” She raised a brittle arm and wagged her fingers toward an empty chair.
Jean, accustomed by now to hospital visiting and the many faces of disease, was nevertheless shocked by Alice’s deterioration. The traditional words of inquiry or encouragement—how are you? you’re looking well—were wholly useless.
“I’m sorry to find you like this,” was the best she could do.
“I’m glad you’re here. Otherwise I’d have had to write you a long letter and I don’t think I’ve got the energy.” She spoke in a low, soft voice, just above a whisper.
“Can I do anything for you?” Jean asked. She glanced at the uneaten meal. “Do you want me to feed you?”
Alice shook her head. “I spent my working life in hospitals, but this is my first time as a patient. First and last.”
“What have you got?” Jean knew she would have no time for evasions or false comfort.
“Cancer. Liver and now spine.”
“Is it very painful?”
Alice gave the merest of nods. “I’ve learned so much about nursing from being on the receiving end of it. Too late to be any use, though.”
“I’m sure you were very good anyway. I had a letter from Brenda van Lingen a while back. She sent her good wishes. And Kitty, too. She lives almost on my doorstep as it turns out.”
“Kitty? Oh yes. How is she?”
“Physically still very limited. But quite an inspiration, really. Studying theology, with the help of her sister.”
Alice managed a smile. “A remarkable girl.”
“I thought so, too.”
“Now, tell me about Gretchen’s baby. What did the tests prove?”
“Oh. Well, the doctors themselves don’t entirely agree. But the skin graft test seemed to suggest that this is not a case of virgin birth.”
Alice gestured for a glass of water; it clashed against her teeth as Jean tried to help her to a drink.
“That’s a pity,” she said. “I was hoping for a miracle.”
“Yes. I think maybe we all were.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t more on the ball when you came to see me. I’d not long had my diagnosis and I’m afraid I was distracted by my own woes.”
“That’s quite understandable. I suppose you know why I’m here.”
“I can guess.” Alice winced as a sudden pain gripped her.
“Are you well enough to talk?” Jean said, her shame at hounding a dying woman just trumped by dread that the answer might be no and that she would be sent on her way with nothing.
“I’m as well as I ever will be.”
There was still the same sharp intelligence in her gaze as she turned it on Jean.
“I wanted to ask you about Victor.”
“How did you find out?” Alice’s voice was a whisper.
“I noticed these references to V in your diary, but none of the patients or nurses had names beginning with V and it set me wondering.”
“I don’t remember writing about Vicky in my diary,” said Alice, shaking her head. “I thought it was only hospital matters.”
“There were no mentions of him during the period while Gretchen was a patient,” said Jean. “Which is why I didn’t come across them at first. Then, when I saw Kitty quite recently, she said while she was at St. Cecilia’s an angel had visited her one night. Obviously, that made me very suspicious.” She realized that she, too, was whispering.
“I didn’t know that. She never said.”
“She’d been encouraged in her belief by one of the nuns, but I don’t think she mentioned it to anyone else at the time. And then this morning Susan Trevor told me you had a nephew called Victor and something she said about his long hair made me think of Kitty’s angel.”
Alice closed her eyes and a tear trembled at the outer edges of the seams.
“He was my sister’s boy. She was a wild one—always in trouble. She wouldn’t tell us who the father was—if she knew. But she wouldn’t give the baby up; she didn’t care what people thought. And the funny thing is, motherhood seemed to be the making of her.