Tears of admiration sprang to Jean’s eyes. Kitty’s bravery and stoicism were a rebuke to her own luxurious troubles.
“I’m studying theology, you know,” Kitty went on. “With Elsie’s help. She reads the books to me and I dictate my essays to her. I’m very blessed.”
After the unnerving whooshing of the iron lung, the silence outside the house was precious as never before. Jean wheeled her bicycle back down the slushy gravel of the driveway deep in thought about this stealthy bedside angel with his gentle hands. Kitty’s testimony had unlocked a door now, and Jean felt that only by returning to St. Cecilia’s and standing in the room where it all took place would she come to a proper understanding of what had happened to Gretchen in the summer of 1946.
* * *
Nursing: An emergency table may be made by using an ironing board placed alongside the patient’s bed. This makes a very handy lightweight table, and is the right height for drinks and plates.
* * *
33
The back door of the ambulance opened and Mrs. Swinney, supported by Jean on one side and a walking stick on the other, made a slow and queenly descent to the pavement. She stood for a moment, looking about her as if expecting some kind of reception committee, before allowing herself to be led down the driveway to the house. She had lost weight in the weeks she had been away and her muscles were thoroughly wasted. What remained of her strength seemed concentrated in the fingers of her right hand, which were now digging into the flesh of Jean’s arm.
The path and step had been cleared of wet leaves and other hazards, and the house made as clean and welcoming as time allowed. Jean had only received notice the day before that her mother would be discharged and had since been trying to make good on her recent neglect of her housekeeping.
As a homecoming treat she had made a fish pie, with potatoes from Howard’s garden, and a queen of puddings, using a reckless half jar of Mrs. Melsom’s raspberry jam. She had considered making up a daybed in the back room overlooking the garden, to spare her mother the stairs, but it was a cold room, with an unswept chimney and a fireplace that had never been used. The garden in late November was not much to look at anyway, so she had decided against it.
They stood in the hallway, Jean’s mother breathless from the journey from curb to house.
“Home again, home again, jiggety-jig,” she panted and then stopped, her eye caught by the new blue carpet in the sitting room, just visible through the open door. “What’s this, then?”
She approached it tentatively, as though gathering courage to dip a toe into its freezing depths.
“Oh, I bought it. It’s rather nice, I think.”
“What was wrong with the old one?”
“Apart from the scorch marks and the bald patches? Hardly anything.”
Her mother gave the merest toss of her head to indicate that the sarcasm had been understood but not enjoyed.
“It’s very bright.”
“That’s because everything else around it is so old and drab.”
“Ring out the old, ring in the new,” she sighed. “I see you’ve moved the furniture around, too. I shan’t know where I am.”
“I wanted to make the place look nice for your return,” Jean said, almost believing in her indignation that this had been the chief impetus for change.
“I don’t suppose I shall be spending much time downstairs,” came the reply. “I’m still very unsteady since falling over. I think it dislodged something.”
Jean breathed deeply, drawing on reserves of patience untested these past weeks.
“Of course, you must do whatever is most comfortable. But it would be better for your spirits to be up and about.”
She wondered if one of those fragments dislodged was the memory of the sharp words they had exchanged the last time they were in the house together. She hoped not, because sooner or later she would have to bring up the vexed subject of Howard again, since it was inconceivable that she would be able to keep the relationship a secret under her mother’s vigilant eye. And yet, it was still more impossible to imagine that she would enjoy the necessary freedom to see him, much less spend the night with him, now that her mother was an even more resolute invalid. The reaction to the new blue carpet, as an index of tolerance for change, was not encouraging.
After a grueling ascent of the staircase, requiring a rest stop halfway, which looked as though it might become permanent, her mother was finally helped to bed.
Jean had tried to banish the smell of damp in the room with the electric bar heater, which was only deployed in exceptional circumstances because it was both dangerous and costly. The cable was frayed, exposing bare wires, and the plug rattled in the socket. It gave off a powerful odor of scorched lint, burned onto the element, which then had to be masked with a squirt of Yardley’s Lily of the Valley. The combination was not particularly soothing and triggered a sneezing fit, which left her mother quite weak and begging for fresh air.