The Convalescent Read online

  “Christmas,” she smiled, combing out her hair with her fingers.

  “Yes,” he said. “Christmas.”

  They exchanged presents, Sophie taking pleasure in trying to guess hers (a bracelet, bought where William had bought his camera) in the darkness. “Now get up and try on these socks,” she said.

  If it was more of a command than he was used to so early in the morning, William didn’t mind, for today, Christmas Day, he would be happy, he felt, to submit to any authority that was spontaneous and vital. (Could he be sure of finding his way otherwise?) Naked by the bed except for his socks, he stood to attention and saluted.

  “They fit beautifully,” he said. “Beautifully.”

  But Sophie, snapping on the light and throwing back the bedclothes, banished his piece of clowning as though it should never have been.

  “Get dressed,” she said.

  Such crossness from Sophie seemed to William uncharacteristic. He couldn’t say that it was premenstrual tension, for it wasn’t. It seemed deeper and more particular than that – Christmas had unsettled her too. It went before him into the corridors and lounges and dining room. It troubled the atmosphere. At one point he noticed that she had stepped outside and was standing in the garden, arms folded, looking up at the lowering sky (if he had been asked for a caption, he might have offered “rebel in chains”). He tapped lightly on a window to attract her attention but she didn’t turn or look up. Later, he approached her with a cup of coffee, but she contrived to dodge away. He thought she might have responded to a bunch of flowers but there were no florists nearby and anyway it was Christmas Day. He could, of course, have pinched one from one of the residents, but all the flowers he saw that morning were wilting, past their best. He would just have to let her be, not allow her to seem to be querying him, the point or worth of his existence. It exasperated him that he had been so quick to think this – that it was because of some lingering insufficiency in himself that her mood had suddenly darkened.

  It relieved him, however, to see that most of the elderly were as remote from the day as he was, but it saddened him too. (Relieved because it meant that he wouldn’t be conspicuous, saddened because it rather suggested a community of the disheartened.) Those who weren’t remote were not so much alert as agitated, struggling to recover whatever sense of occasion or festival they once had. And those who had to be told what day it was repeated the word “Christmas” slowly, either with a dawning sense of its significance, or, shaking their heads, with little sense of its significance at all. Such greetings as there were were aimed, William felt, more at the dead than at the living. This conspiratorial tenderness in the north lounge, for instance, this clapping of the hands, this low singing that was interrupted as though by a blow: hadn’t it arisen with the dear dead in mind? Here and there, too, scraps of paper were produced on which, in childish aged hand, greetings had been scrawled – some of these for William and Sophie and Margaret and May, it was true – but some to be delivered elsewhere. Elsewhere. Anywhere. William stepped out into the corridor, therefore, waited for a few moments, and then, returning, announced that the messages had been successfully delivered, gratefully received. Knowing smiles – more knowing than any he had ever seen – were invariably the response to this.

  There was to be a service at eleven, in the east lounge, followed by lunch at twelve-thirty. William took three of the patients to it in wheelchairs (amused at his ease and dexterity with wheelchairs now – he who hadn’t been able to walk straight a year ago). For each he had a story, which he told in a quiet voice, leaning forwards. And each listened, as if this story was part of the service – the service itself, even. As if in the coils of William’s narrative might be the good tidings long promised, long denied. For Miss Bruce he had a story from his childhood, an episode long forgotten. He was walking with his sister in the hills and before them, suddenly before them, was a man who could have been a shepherd or a poacher. He was kneeling, very still, as if he had held the position for some time. They were reluctant to approach, but the man beckoned to them, and when they came up to him they saw a sheep on its side, in labour. The man asked them to touch it, saying, “It was lucky to be touched by the bairns.” William did so, feeling a violent tensing beneath the thick damp wool, but Marion, who was squeamish, turned away. At which the shepherd, looking up, leered toothlessly.

  He came to the end of the story just as he was settling Miss Bruce in the east lounge. It happened with the other stories too – he finished them just as he was settling Miss Marshall and Mr Lawson, a coincidence of timing which greatly pleased him. In wheelchairs side by side, their heads not drooping now, but craning, expectant, three old people to whom he had just told stories, the stories as fresh to him as they had been to them. And all perhaps complementary. One about a lamb that wouldn’t be born; another about the first fish he had caught – nine years old, he had cried for hours because it had been so little; the third about a time when, across swampland and into a copse, he had been chased by a mother swan.

  There were those who refused to attend, however, remaining bitterly in their favourite corners, the reasons given being a dislike of Christmas, a dislike of the minister, a dislike of the sound of aged voices singing hymns, a dislike of prayers and of assembly. Matron made several attempts to round them up, but without success. Muttering about “impossible natures”, she asked William to see what he could do; but, faced by such bitter obduracy and by rages so deep they made the patients and their chairs tremble, he could do nothing but stand and pity, stand and admire. The reverent submission to Christmas and this virulent resistance to it: he admired both equally.

  Miss Friel was one of these. Though sure that she wouldn’t go to the service, William was unprepared for the manner of her refusal. Smiling, she took him by both hands and walked slowly into the corridor with him, standing just outside her door. She wouldn’t let go of his hands and, after a few minutes, he didn’t want her to. Thus, like lovers unable to part – a sort of exquisite idling – they stood for some moments. At last, reluctantly letting go of his left hand, she shook him firmly by the right, still smiling (she might have been smiling since he had last seen her, weeks ago). And said, her voice thin, high and fading: “enjoy yourself.” Only after a moment or two, though, when he was out of the room and descending the stairs – descending them with an obscure but deepening sense of purpose – did he realise that she had actually spoken. He stood stock still and seemed to hear the words again, louder now. “Enjoy yourself.”

  Standing at the back of the congregation, William whispered to Sophie, who was beside him, that Miss Friel had spoken. Had bid him enjoy himself. She looked at him in disbelief. But then, as matron and the minister entered, the minister in a black gown, matron out of her uniform, in a blue dress, she quietly slipped her right hand into his left pocket and began – at first as if trying to conceal her purpose – to massage his groin. When he looked at her, she raised her eyebrows and mouthed, in mock-ecstatic slow motion: “enjoy yourself.” He looked down and grasped the back of the chair in front of him. In it was old Miss Adams, already half asleep. (Or was she ill? Dying?) As Sophie continued to massage him, William, in an effort to control himself, fixed his gaze on the back of Miss Adams’ neck. Down from the neck would be the vertebrae, crumbling probably, and down from them the pelvis, a mere cage now for bloodless loins. But the back of an adult neck: wasn’t it almost unchanged from infancy? Notwithstanding the yellow skin, the moles with hairs growing from them, the dead white hair? Desperately aroused (such a private excitement on such a public occasion), half trying to disengage himself from Sophie – who, each time he glanced at her, slowly mouthed “enjoy yourself” – William bent forwards. It seemed to him that he wanted to do one or the other of two things: press his lips to Miss Adams’ neck, or tell her, whisper to her – deeply whisper to her! – a story. Could he somehow manage both, making the rhythm of his harmonisation (story with kiss, kiss with story) express some of this dreadful excitem
ent that Sophie – her hand in his pocket as quick and deft as a tongue – was making him feel? No; mere craziness. Mere craziness! He turned his attention to the minister’s words – his address had been under way for some moments – hoping that they would allow him to compose himself.

  “… a special day, this day of the Lord’s coming. And special regardless of our age, health and circumstances. You who are hard of hearing, or lame, or confused, can still know the richness of this day. The unique richness of its promise. To turn into the paths of redemption after a lifetime in the shallows of disappointment is, let me assure you, always possible. Always. There are no full stops in the spiritual life. All is possible, rich …”

  The minister was standing at an old lectern on what looked like a polished segment of tree trunk. Now and then he leaned on it, as though it was a true pulpit high up in the corner of some church, and it creaked and moved. It didn’t seem as if he intended it to move, but, when it did, he used the movements to suggest the precariousness of the Christian life, smiling tensely and wrestling with it.

  “… we are always as though between the certainty of God and the certainty of His absence. We move uneasily, craving a deeper knowledge, a deeper certainty, but we move nonetheless. For movement with respect to God is not like movement in the world; it is not measurable …”

  Sophie’s hand had slipped from William’s pocket. Glancing at her, he saw that, having been as aroused as he, she was becoming tense, angry. It was as if the minister’s manner had killed their passion not just for today but forever.

  “So however old and frail we may be, we stand an equal chance with God. Youth does not give us an advantage here. Youth with all its arrogance is not better positioned to receive God’s grace. Oh no! If any are favoured, it is those who, with the years, have become purged of their egotism. So take heart on this day, and remember Christ.”

  The skin on the minister’s face, William thought, seemed tighter today than usual. And the face redder. The skin tighter and the face redder and the words less controlled. The sermon did not seem to be his own. Did you labour in the pulpit if the words were not your own? He had begun by preaching with a sort of mannered quietness, but now he had become as though severed from his own words. The lectern rocked again and the minister’s head jerked forwards, backwards, forwards. His words might have been jabs in the side, so strangely was he moving. And the words “arraign” and “arraignment” – grinding words, absolute words – came to William. Could you be arraigned by your own words? Brought low by your own phrases, metaphors? Cut down?

  Behind the minister and to the left sat matron at the piano, hands in her lap, utterly impassive. There was only to be one hymn, William had heard, and only two verses of it at that; the congregation was not up to any more, apparently.

  “So let us lift up our hearts in gladness on this day. He who has made it so that age can be as youth in matters of the spirit was born in a manger, in Bethlehem of Judaea. And in our gladness let us sing verses four and five of hymn number one hundred and …”

  Under cover of the sound of hymn books being shakily opened Sophie leaned over to William and asked why the minister wasn’t in “a real church”. In her flat shoes her toes were squirming with irritation. The elderly, dewlaps jiggling, grew long necks in order to look at each other before they rose (as though, to be able to rise at all, each had to be sure that he wouldn’t rise alone).

  A passion for oblivion could be heard in the singing, if singing it was. When William sang, however, it was with a defiant richness which surprised him. His baritone beside Sophie’s eager soprano might have heartened the occasion considerably had they been allowed to sing more than two verses. Should he lead the congregation in another verse therefore? Make it possible for those who wanted to let go (to bleed or to praise) to do so?

  “Let us pray …” The minister’s tone was sepulchral-majestic, but still he appeared to be wrestling with the lectern.

  In the silence, then, Miss Adams, who hadn’t risen for the hymn, fainted sideways in her chair. Quickly gathering her up in his arms, William carried her out and bore her as far from the east lounge and the broken muttering of the final prayer (“…father who art …hallowed … name …”) as he could.

  At a point where two corridors met – a point where, because the roof was high and arched in order to join two wings of the building, there was unusual silence, resonant silence – he lowered her into a chair. And there, saying that she was too old for worship now, for the wheedling impatience of ministers, she eventually revived.

  The idea was that the staff should eat separately; with some of the patients in need of assistance at the table, they wouldn’t have much chance of enjoying their meal otherwise. William helped Mr Clow and Miss Adams, Miss Adams, smiling gratefully, finding enough strength to pop the occasional bit of turkey into her helper’s mouth. It had been so, William remembered, when the children were young – that patient mimicry of the mouth movements you wanted them to make. Young and old coaxed into sustenance. Open – close – eat. Open – close – eat.

  Mealtimes in the Montgomery were invariably quiet, because the elderly couldn’t do justice both to their food and their companions. But this Christmas lunch was the quietest mealtime William could remember. Now it was like the last meal before exile, now like part of some remorseless plan of matron’s to sustain the illusion of festival, now like something so little desired by the elderly it had the appearance of sadism, now like a scientific experiment (how much turkey did people over eighty actually eat?) and now like an advertisement for some worthy but hard-pressed Home or Hospice. Many appearances, many faces, but the occasion dropping through them like a stone.

  Soon turkey and roast potatoes and sprouts – a quarter eaten, half eaten, barely touched – were growing cold on twenty-five plates. Sophie, William, May and Margaret looked at each other but didn’t speak, didn’t move. Another course – jelly and ice-cream – was promised but it was as if the patients, by their remarkable silence, were declining it. Sophie, perhaps thinking that this might help to explain the general disaffection, sampled a piece of turkey. The collective pulse dropped. Dropped further. Further. The fluorescent lighting clicked and winked. Someone was heard to ask why they were still praying. May snorted. Somebody else laughed. Then – but for a low moaning, almost inaudible – there was silence again. Outside also it was still, still and grey. (The morning wind had died, leaving a ravaged unmoving sky.)

  William’s last thought before he stood up (knocking over his chair) concerned the relationship between the unprecedented silence and the unprecedented loss of appetite. Did the silence come from the loss of appetite, or the loss of appetite from the silence, or both from some other source – some profound instinctive obduracy?

  He didn’t stop to pick up his chair, but moved to a corner of the dining room where, arms folded as in ostentatious supervision, he stood with his back to the wall.

  He was smiling, he knew, but he didn’t understand why. From her occasional glances of approval, though, it was as if Sophie did understand. His feeling was that he had been divested of the usual responsibilities in order to assume some greater responsibility. Was he bearing witness? If so, to what exactly and in whose name and why did he bear it with a smile? (If he had a certain dignity, withdrawn in the corner, it was partly because he believed he would soon be able to answer these questions.) He received further looks of approval – not just from Sophie now – which made him feel even more strongly that something was being expected of him. Was he simply to mark the afflicted state of this particular community on this particular day, imprinting it deeply on his memory? Or was he also to act? How? And in what spirit? Unusually still – watching and being watched, smiling and being smiled at – he asked these questions of himself. That someone had to stand where he was standing – a threshold, surely – was apparent. The spot might have been marked out for just this kind of occupation, for just this kind of desperate readiness.

  The
n, with a bang, the dining-room door opened and the minister entered dressed as Santa Claus. He had a large sack of gifts on his back and walked with a kind of mock-benevolent stoop, leering and looking to left and right. Behind him came matron, smiling as if she had done well to find a Santa Claus prepared to enter the Montgomery, and clapping as one does to alert others to the slowness of their appreciation.

  So it was for this that he had been waiting? To this that his strange smile had been pointing? A terrific smile, William felt himself drawn down into it further, into its remorselessness, its inspired disenchantment. And moved forwards, knowing a concentration of mind and body that was like a release from all faltering.

  “So take heart on this day,” he said half sardonically, “and remember Christ.”

  All the presents had been gaily parcelled and named, and all were so light that if the sack had been cast into the morning wind it would have blown away over the walls of the Montgomery. There were cheap biros and two-handled plastic mugs with mottoes in small red letters and toothbrushes and framed photographs of the Montgomery (taken on a day more promising than this) and calendars and sea-shells and plastic egg cups. It was apparently the minister’s belief that he alone should be allowed to distribute them, picking them from the sack one by one. But he found that, following behind, were Sophie and William, and that soon they were picking presents from the sack before he could get at them, trying by the manner of their giving to redeem the occasion a little.