She caught herself. ‘I am thinking as if he were dead. He is not dead.’
But it would not be long. It could not be.
And then she slept, lightly, but it helped her and she did not dream, but was just aware of the curtain blowing and of Tommy’s cold hand.
She woke because he had said something, and when she turned, she realised that he was sitting up.
‘Tommy?’
‘Oh, Eve, would you open the window?’
‘It is open.’
‘I’m so hot. Can you open it a little more? I feel I’m burning. I woke with it. It’s as if you’d opened the lid of the range and set me beside it.’
She reached out to him and felt his skin, but even before she touched it she could feel the warmth coming off him.
She switched on the lamp, got out of bed and drew one curtain back, but she was afraid to let in more cool air in case he took a chill and pneumonia.
Now he had pushed back the bedclothes and unbuttoned his pyjama jacket.
‘Tommy, try not to do that, you could catch a bad cold. Are you thirsty?’
‘Maybe some water would help cool me? I was so cold before. I slept well, the pain was better.’
‘Those tablets the doctor brought … he said they were stronger. That’s good you slept so peacefully.’
‘I was peaceful. That’s the right word. I feel peaceful now. As if this warmth were going right through to my bones, right through my body – it’s like sitting in the sun.’
Eve looked at him. There was something in his face, something about him that had changed. His face looked less ghostly, his eyes less sunken into his head and pain-filled.
She went down into the quiet kitchen and opened the back door and the soft sound of the rain on the grass was like a balm. She ran her hands under the cold water.
Perhaps this was what happened sometimes, nearer to death? The cold and then the sudden feeling of heat, the last alertness before the mind clouded again? She did not know. Death seemed to take so many forms. But if he had a little while of calm and ease she would be thankful for it. She drank a little of the water herself and it tasted of the spring from which it came up on the peak, cold and clear and sweet.
He took the beaker from her in steady hands and drank it slowly down to the last.
‘Ah, Eve, that’s the most wonderful drink I ever drank.’
His voice was so heartfelt that she laughed. ‘It’s only water.’
‘I never tasted water like it.’
‘Are you still so hot?’
‘Not so much.’
‘How’s your stomach? Do you need any medicine again?’
He leaned forward a little. ‘It’s not painful now.’
‘Those tablets must last a long time then. Only tell me if you need more.’
He lay down on his back. ‘It was like being in the sun. The heat of it.’
‘Maybe that was the tablets as well.’
‘Maybe, but I know it’s better being warm than cold.’
‘How are you now?’
He paused, as if checking himself carefully. Then he said, ‘Tired. As if I fought the war and all on my own.’
This time, she undressed before she lay down. She had been terrified that she might have to go and get Bert to fetch the doctor, or bring Mary in to be with her, she had believed he would die at any minute, but as he seemed quieter, and his pain had eased for now, perhaps she could sleep better herself.
She switched off the lamp and reached to him again. His skin felt as it always used to feel.
‘You were so hot I could have dried the washing by putting it by you,’ she said.
‘Yes. How long did it last, Eve? Feeling so warm.’
‘I know it woke you and you were pushing the clothes off trying to get cooler. But I don’t think it was long. Like a sudden fever.’
‘And it burned itself out.’
‘Yes,’ she said. And remembered, as she knew that he remembered. But his illness and Jeannie Eliza’s had been quite different.
She felt his body go heavy as sleep came over him and so, after a little while, she herself slept too, to the gentle patting of the rain and the soft movement of the curtain.
She slipped out of bed and downstairs before six. Tommy was very still.
The rain was over and the sky clear, but when she opened the door onto the garden and the first clucking sounds of the chickens, she could still smell the dampness on leaf and grass and earth and see how it had brought out the fresh green in everything. She filled the pan and took it down to the birds.
She liked this time alone and felt better for sleeping, but in her mind was only the worry of how Tommy would be when he woke, whether his pain would have come back and increased, whether he would again be cold as stone or burning hot. How much longer he would go on living. She had thought he would die the previous night and so did the doctor, she had told that from everything he had said, the look on him, the way he had touched her arm. How could you go on waiting for someone to die, knowing that they surely would, but not knowing when? How could any person?
It was so quiet when she went back into the house that rather than disturb Tommy’s sleep she riddled out the range and filled it, set the kettle on and took one of the warm eggs she had just picked up from the straw and put it on to boil. She felt guilty, enjoying all of it, the quiet movements, the small sounds, the smell of the air coming through the open door, but she needed the time to gather her strength again, for who knew what was to come that day.
Upstairs, Tommy woke. For a moment, after he opened his eyes, he was troubled, sensing something different and strange and not understanding what it was. Eve had gone down. The house was quiet, but then he heard the sound of the spoon scraping against the tin and the hens clucking in their scramble for the food. He lay still. He had no pain. He felt quite at ease and when he moved, first his limbs and then his body, there was still no pain or even the discomfort he had grown used to over the past months. He put his hand up and touched his finger to the swelling under his neck which had been hard and giving him such pain to breathe and swallow, though he had said little about it to Eve, not wanting to worry her more. But Dr McElvey had felt it and known.
The swelling was no longer there. He had the wrong side, then, and moved his hand to the right but there had never been any swelling on the right and there was none now. Back again. Feel. Up. Down. Left. Right.
Nothing. His jaw and face and neck were as they had used to be, though he was rough for want of a shave.
Nothing.
He moved his hands down to his belly which had been swollen and which he had barely been able to touch, the pain of it had been so great. Now he felt nothing at all but his finger on the skin. One finger. Two. He traced them slowly across. Three and then the palm of his hand. He put the smallest amount of pressure he could, then a little more, and then more, until he was able to push down quite far. No pain. Nothing. His stomach was flat and smooth. As it had always been.
As it had been.
He sat up, bracing himself, as he had done for so long, against the immediate pain, but his body moved quite easily in the old way. He took a breath, then a deeper one, filled his lungs full, full, held his breath and let it go with a great explosion so that he gasped. But there was no pain.
He lay back and closed his eyes, not understanding any of it, and then he heard voices in the room below, Eve’s quiet one and that of a man. Bert Ankerby must have come to see what he could do to help her with the heavy jobs, as he had been doing for the past week or more and which had made Tommy ashamed, for Bert was in his seventies and he himself a young man and always proud of his strength.
Footsteps on the stairs.
Dr McElvey sometimes lost sleep over a patient and he had lost most of the previous night worrying about Tommy Carr, anxious for him not to linger, concerned about the level of pain he would have to endure, angry that there was no more he could do for the man other than start to administer his m
edicine via injection and to give higher doses. Life was hard for everyone in this town now that this works and that had closed and there was no prospect of other employment, that men and women struggled on pence and tried and so often failed to retain some dignity, that children were born into houses where poverty and misery and dirt and sickness and hunger were the norm.
He did what he could and it was always too little and there were plenty of others in pain, the same pain as Tommy Carr or a different one, it scarcely mattered, and the hospital wards were crammed full. But because of Jeannie Eliza and because of something about the couple and about the home they had, out of the way and contented and calm, because of things he himself did not fully grasp, the doctor felt acutely for them and when he could no longer bear to lie trying and failing to sleep, he had come out to them early. As he drove towards 6 The Cottages, he was leaden-hearted, sure that he would find Tommy dead or near to death, dreading to look into Eve’s face. He shocked himself. He was a doctor. He tried to cure and comfort his patients and to treat them kindly, but he had never become close to any one of them, never been touched deep in his own heart as he was touched now.
Eve was tending to the chickens.
‘I woke so early. Tommy is asleep now. It’s very good of you to come here again to us.’
He said nothing more about payment, not wanting to hurt her pride, but it would be on her mind, he knew. He tried to keep his charges modest, but he had been to the house and seen Tommy at the surgery, there were the medicines. She knew there had to be a bill she would struggle to pay.
‘Can I pour you some tea, Doctor? I’m making fresh for myself. Tommy can’t manage hot things. He finds it hard even to swallow cold water.’
‘I’ll go to him first and then a cup of tea would be very welcome, thank you. You stay here, finish your jobs. I know my way up, Eve.’
He went up and into the bedroom and stopped dead. The curtains were drawn back, the window open, and Tommy was standing beside it, both arms outstretched, head back, taking in lungfuls of air.
15
EVE LOOKED up. Her hands were shaking and her mind was a jumble of fears and bewilderment so that when she saw him she dropped a cup into the stone sink, smashing it. She flew out of the door, down the path.
‘Tommy!’
But he was already at the gate.
‘Tommy, what are you doing?’
Then he was through the gate and closing it. He wore his old trousers with the belt he had had to notch in so many times, and the jacket that hung off him like an old garment on a scarecrow.
‘Let me be.’
‘You can’t … Where are you going?’
He looked at her, his face grave and kind and pale. But his eyes were bright. The sunken look of the last weeks had quite gone.
‘I’ll be back in a while.’
She looked at him helplessly. ‘Did the doctor –’
‘The doctor said nothing. What was there to say?’
He smiled at her and turned away and Eve watched him walk steadily along the track, his stride careful, as if he was still not sure of his footing and whether his body would bear him. He did not look back. She watched him until he was way off, going towards the peak. It was a cool, grey morning and a thin cloud wreathed over it. She went to look at the chickens, bent to pull up a clump of dock leaves. Perhaps Bert or Mary was at one of the windows, watching her, watching Tommy, and as bewildered as she was. Was he bewildered himself? He had said almost nothing and Dr McElvey too, who had come down the stairs at last and slowly, his face furrowed, and gone out without a word other than ‘Goodbye, Eve’.
She felt as if a door had been slammed in her face. Something strange or terrible had happened – for she could not think of it in any other way, at least not yet – something that had thrown her into a confusion so that she was unsure even of the ground beneath her feet. It was as though Tommy had wanted it hidden even from her.
She went in and saw the broken china in the sink and stared at it.
She doubted her own name.
Neither of them had slept. Tommy had not been able to lie still but had sat up, stood, paced about, gone down the stairs, and all the time, touching his hand to his stomach and then to his neck, his eyes huge, face pale.
She had asked what had happened over and over again and all he had said, once, was, ‘I was hot. There was the heat, like a furnace.’
‘But why should that take all the pain and swelling away? The medicine the doctor left –’
‘No.’ He spoke abruptly, as he had never done to her before. ‘It hasn’t to do with the medicine.’
She had not known what else to say. But when he had asked her to touch the swelling on the side of his jaw and to press her hand into his stomach she had done so. The swelling had gone, not leaving any shrunken skin or roughness, leaving nothing, as if it had never been there and his stomach was flat and smooth and the skin a healthy colour. When she had pressed and pressed even more firmly, he had not flinched.
‘I don’t understand what’s happening.’
Tommy had not replied.
She had cooked and he had eaten, more than he had eaten for a long time, though not as much as he used to put away, and drunk four cups of tea. He had been withdrawn and silent, not exactly his old self nor yet the one she had grown used to and had to look after. She ate a little though she had no appetite.
More than anything, she longed for something to be familiar and to be able to get a grasp on life. More than anything, she was frightened.
She wondered now how she could face the Ankerbys, what she might say that would make sense, and she decided there was nothing and so she hid from them. Yet she wanted someone to be with her so that she did not have only her own thoughts for company, thoughts that led to a sort of madness, for what else was all of this but a madness? Tommy had been sick to death. He had had a vast tumour in his stomach, a swelling on his jaw, pain and sickness. He had been wasted and exhausted, he had been unable to eat or drink. She had prepared herself for his dying, yesterday, today, not wanted him to die, but somehow needing to accept that it would happen. She had been so unprepared for the death of Jeannie Eliza that the shock had scarred her for the rest of her days, but this time she had some warning.
But what would happen now? Was he well after all? Would he be ill again tomorrow or next week? Was he still going to die soon? She did not know what she was preparing for, if anything, if anything. She poured a glass of water and sat at the kitchen table, staring into it, not thinking, not feeling, just staring, while Tommy had gone walking across the track that led to the peak and she could not know if he would return.
She half thought of going to see Dr McElvey, for perhaps he would be able to explain it all to her, would have an understanding of what had happened. But even as she stood up and went to comb her hair and get into her coat, she knew she could not go because the doctor knew nothing, understood nothing, or why had he run from the house that morning, ducking his head for fear of having to confront her, say something?
She sat down again.
In the house next door, Mary Ankerby said again that something had happened, something was not right. Bert did not reply, for what could be said?
Between the two houses was a strange fog of silence and bewilderment and neither the Ankerbys nor Eve could bring themselves to try and reach one another through it.
16
TOMMY WALKED. His body felt light. He could lift his feet without effort and he had no pain or even much sensation in him. He did not think, but only exulted in his own steady, even pace across the track towards the peak and round the base to the other side.
His clothes felt loose upon him. The air touched the skin of his face and was cool.
He knew where he was going but not why. Eve was the one who went there now and had understood why he did not, even before the illness, but his legs would have taken him there today if they had been tied together.
He expected to be alone but as he app
roached the last few yards leading to the church he saw that two women were there, going among the gravestones and peering at the inscriptions. Tommy stopped. He did not want to be pried upon, felt an odd shame for having come here, though he was angry at himself for there was no reason.
‘Tommy Carr?’
He remembered her dimly, though not her name, a friend of his mother’s from years back. She had sometimes come round.
He wanted to duck away but instead just went on standing until she came right up to him, a stout woman with a turn in her eye.
She stared into his face. ‘It is Tommy.’
‘It is.’
‘Well.’
She called out, without turning her head. ‘Come here, see who it is.’
He felt like one of the gravestones, being such an object of their attention. When the other woman approached, he knew her at once, Ivy Matlock, whose husband had been crushed by the steel beam coming loose from its winch and who had run all the way to the factory barefoot and screaming so that she had to be held back by three men, though she fought and even bit them.
‘Ivy.’
‘But you were dead – or at death’s door with it standing right ajar, Tommy Carr.’
‘And now look at you, walking out here.’ The other one spoke as if she were accusing him of some failing or even of a crime.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, and then moved to go past them, but they were not having it and blocked his way. He wanted to shove them aside with an anger he had rarely known. If he had moved he would have knocked them both down.
‘What, it was all lies then? And you perfectly fit?’
He did not have to explain anything to them and besides, he could not, he could not explain it to himself, yet he was stuttering something.