going to stay with one of her sisters, who did not want her. Or – in the end – the geriatric ward of some hospital.
Can’t die here, she thought, in the middle of this night. And there might be years and years until
that.
Arthritis did not kill. One might go on and on, hopelessly being a nuisance to other people; in the end, lowering standards because of rising prices. For her, the Claremont was only
just
achieved. Down the ladder she obviously would have to go.
And now she began to think most bitterly of Mrs Palfrey – with all that wine-drinking, and her flushed cheeks, and the young man to whom she had offered smoked salmon at five-and-sixpence a portion. They had leaned towards one another over the table, their eyes on one another’s faces, like lovers. Later, buttering a piece of bread – he had eaten so much butter that the waiter had grown sullen – he had said (Mrs Arbuthnot straining her ears): ‘Mummy’s a bit of a slattern; that’s putting it mildly.’ ‘I can’t let you speak of your Mamma like that,’ Mrs Palfrey had replied – and had immediately laughed, as if it were not her own daughter she should be defending. Mrs Arbuthnot had ears sharpened by malice, and she sat at a near-by table; but this was almost all that she had heard, although her head had ached with listening.
Mrs Palfrey is a dark horse, she thought. At this unintended little pun in her mind, she tipped her head back against the pillow and grimaced, by way of smiling. ‘You’re a dark horse, Mrs Palfrey’, I shall say. She turned her head to look at the clock, and there was a sound like the crushing of granulated sugar at the back of her neck as she moved it. Now she needed to make a journey to the lavatory down the corridor. So many times a night she must grasp her strength for this ordeal. She deferred, and drowsed and slept.
CHAPTER FIVE
O N Sundays – especially p.m. – Ludo was always depressed. Something lowering was in the air: at least three times during the day, for instance, the dreadful clanging doom of neighbourhood bells, the sauntering, church-people’s legs beyond the area railings. He squatted and squinted up at them, at the boring hats of the women going by – they were mostly women – and he was enraged with them for so lowering his spirits. They did so to the extent that he could not work: and he could not
go
to work.
From somewhere – most certainly not from his mother – he had inherited a feeling that Sunday was a day of rest, and so he fretted through it, and always came to the end of it with a sense of wide ennui and wasted time.
Sometimes, during this particular Sunday, he thought of his five-pound note, and was tempted to go out to spend it; but he did no more than walk to a pub at midday, where he knew no one, met no one. To be lonely in South Kensington on a Sunday was the utmost loneliness, he decided.
In the afternoon, from duty, he wrote to his mother. ‘Dearest Mimsie’ – grimacing as he wrote the word. This was to him simply a Sunday-afternoon task, going back so long – to pre-prep school, he supposed. Hecould remember himself as a little boy in that bleak, battered playroom, drawing the letters laboriously on the page. ‘Dear Mimsie.’ Sometimes a tear had fallen. So, from the beginning, he had hated Sundays. And those early ones had probably been the worst ones of his life.
‘Dearest Mimsie,’ he wrote now. ‘Thank you for the postal-order.’ (For it was still like school.) ‘I really live sparsely now, and it made – the postal-order, I mean -briefly, the difference between starvation and survival. I am working hard at my novel, and, to reward me, I suppose, fortune cast an old lady down my area, just when I needed her, for it took my fancy to write about elderly women. I used to watch them in the boarding-house when I was in Rep in Woodbury, sitting like toads in dark corners, dropping off or dozing, or burrowing down the sides of armchairs for
Can’t die here, she thought, in the middle of this night. And there might be years and years until
that.
Arthritis did not kill. One might go on and on, hopelessly being a nuisance to other people; in the end, lowering standards because of rising prices. For her, the Claremont was only
just
achieved. Down the ladder she obviously would have to go.
And now she began to think most bitterly of Mrs Palfrey – with all that wine-drinking, and her flushed cheeks, and the young man to whom she had offered smoked salmon at five-and-sixpence a portion. They had leaned towards one another over the table, their eyes on one another’s faces, like lovers. Later, buttering a piece of bread – he had eaten so much butter that the waiter had grown sullen – he had said (Mrs Arbuthnot straining her ears): ‘Mummy’s a bit of a slattern; that’s putting it mildly.’ ‘I can’t let you speak of your Mamma like that,’ Mrs Palfrey had replied – and had immediately laughed, as if it were not her own daughter she should be defending. Mrs Arbuthnot had ears sharpened by malice, and she sat at a near-by table; but this was almost all that she had heard, although her head had ached with listening.
Mrs Palfrey is a dark horse, she thought. At this unintended little pun in her mind, she tipped her head back against the pillow and grimaced, by way of smiling. ‘You’re a dark horse, Mrs Palfrey’, I shall say. She turned her head to look at the clock, and there was a sound like the crushing of granulated sugar at the back of her neck as she moved it. Now she needed to make a journey to the lavatory down the corridor. So many times a night she must grasp her strength for this ordeal. She deferred, and drowsed and slept.
CHAPTER FIVE
O N Sundays – especially p.m. – Ludo was always depressed. Something lowering was in the air: at least three times during the day, for instance, the dreadful clanging doom of neighbourhood bells, the sauntering, church-people’s legs beyond the area railings. He squatted and squinted up at them, at the boring hats of the women going by – they were mostly women – and he was enraged with them for so lowering his spirits. They did so to the extent that he could not work: and he could not
go
to work.
From somewhere – most certainly not from his mother – he had inherited a feeling that Sunday was a day of rest, and so he fretted through it, and always came to the end of it with a sense of wide ennui and wasted time.
Sometimes, during this particular Sunday, he thought of his five-pound note, and was tempted to go out to spend it; but he did no more than walk to a pub at midday, where he knew no one, met no one. To be lonely in South Kensington on a Sunday was the utmost loneliness, he decided.
In the afternoon, from duty, he wrote to his mother. ‘Dearest Mimsie’ – grimacing as he wrote the word. This was to him simply a Sunday-afternoon task, going back so long – to pre-prep school, he supposed. Hecould remember himself as a little boy in that bleak, battered playroom, drawing the letters laboriously on the page. ‘Dear Mimsie.’ Sometimes a tear had fallen. So, from the beginning, he had hated Sundays. And those early ones had probably been the worst ones of his life.
‘Dearest Mimsie,’ he wrote now. ‘Thank you for the postal-order.’ (For it was still like school.) ‘I really live sparsely now, and it made – the postal-order, I mean -briefly, the difference between starvation and survival. I am working hard at my novel, and, to reward me, I suppose, fortune cast an old lady down my area, just when I needed her, for it took my fancy to write about elderly women. I used to watch them in the boarding-house when I was in Rep in Woodbury, sitting like toads in dark corners, dropping off or dozing, or burrowing down the sides of armchairs for
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