The doctor was coming this afternoon for a checkup, but Dilys didn’t intend to tell him any of this, not unless he asked her
directly, and perhaps not even then. She knew what he’d do, he’d prescribe a sedative to calm Mrs. Matson down into a nice
peaceful departure. That wasn’t right. Mrs. Matson wanted to think. It was really important. It was the only thing left.
But if she didn’t let herself rest a bit when she got the chance, she’d be gone too soon to find the answer. That must’ve
been a nasty moment for her just now, when she’d tried to say something and found she couldn’t. Frightening.
Having spun things out as much as she could, Dilys made the call. A woman’s voice answered, light, anxious, hesitating over
the number she gave.
“Is Mr. Stadding there, please?”
“I’ll just go and see…Who shall I say?”
“My name’s Dilys Roberts. I’m speaking for Mrs. Matson, because she can’t use the phone.”
“I don’t understand. Which of you wants to talk to my husband?”
Dilys explained again.
“It’s about the Cambi Road Association,” she added.“Oh, dear…well, I’ll see.”
There was a long pause. Dilys waited, puzzled. This Mr. Stadding was Major Stadding’s son, wasn’t he, the one in the photographs.
He oughtn’t to have been much more than Mrs. Thomas’s age, but his wife sounded quite a bit older than that, nervy too, used
to being looked after, finding even the taking of a telephone message bothersome.
There was the click of another extension and the voice returned, more anxious than ever.
“I’m so sorry, but my husband can’t come now. He’s not been well, especially these last few days. He says if you could write.
Do you have the address?”
“Yes, but…you see, we were hoping Mr. Stadding might come and see Mrs. Matson…”
“Oh, there’s no question of that. I told you he wasn’t at all well. No, you’ll have to write.”
Dilys looked towards the bed. The lips moved briefly, shaping a syllable—inaudible, but Dilys could perceive the weary acceptance.
She thanked Mrs. Stadding and rang off. She stood for a little, staring blankly at the handset, still in her hand, while she
put her thoughts in order, then turned to the bed.
“Now don’t try and say anything for the moment, dearie—you’re just wearing yourself out, and it won’t get you anywhere doing
that. You’re going to have a proper rest now, and I’m going to put your book on and you’re going to listen to it for a whole
side, and then we’ll see. And while you’re doing that I’m going to write a letter to Mr. Stadding, so you know something’s
happening and you don’t just lie there fretting to get on. Only first we’ve got to get right what you want me to say. No,
don’t try and say anything, not yet. You want to ask him something, and it’s about his father, isn’t it? Trouble is, it’s
a secret, and he’s not going to tell just anyone. It’s got to be you, just between the two of you—that’s why you hoped he
could come and see you. So it’s no use you telling me this question, because it’s a secret, like I say, and how’s he to know
I’m telling the truth anyway, about it all being for you, and I’m not going to read what he says when he writes back to you?
That’s really the first thing we’ve got to work out. I mean, if he’s sure it’s you and you can tell him somehow he can rely
on me—which he can, if only he knew—and then, somehow, we can get your question to him, do you follow…?”
She paused, not expecting any answer, because that was as far as her thoughts had reached. She saw Mrs. Matson’s lips move,
again inaudibly.
“I’m afraid I didn’t catch that, dearie—you’ll have to say it again.”
She bent over the bed to hear the faint syllable.
“Tape.”
“Tape…? Oh, a tape recorder! That’s brilliant! Yes, I can hold the microphone right up close and I’ll put my Walkman on so
I can’t hear what you’re saying and I can tell him all that in the letter and he can put his answer on the tape and send it
back for you to listen to. You are a clever old thing, you really are!…Not like that? But…All right, you tell me!”
Again she bent and strained to hear the fought-for syllables, separated each from the next like drips from a tap.
“Write. First. Me. Dead. Soon. Must. Know. Before. Album. Family. Fifty. Seven…”
There was a longer pause. Dilys waited, realising that Mrs. Matson was momentarily exhausted and only giving herself time
to gather strength again. She wouldn’t be at ease, not to rest properly, until she’d finished the message.
“Man. On. Fire. Escape. Send. Say. ‘Carrot.’ Joke.#8221;
“Joke…Oh, I get it! There was a joke about a carrot, and he’ll remember, so he’ll know it’s got to be you. That’s brilliant!
And we can send it to him and ask him to help while we’re getting the tape ready…You don’t think we might as well wait. Ellen’s
got a recorder sure as eggs. You’ve just got to have a decent rest, not fretting about it all, and you’ll find you’re talking
normal again. And I’ll get that letter written while you’re resting, and see Ellen and get it all set up ready, so you can
do the tape this afternoon and we’ll get it all in the late post. Don’t you think that’s best? Really?”
“No. Send. Letter. Photo. Graph. You. Take. Tape.”
“Me? Well, if that’s the way you want it. Just as you like, dearie. Now is that everything? It better had be, ’cause this
isn’t doing you any good. Best have it off your chest, I know, but it’s no use trying yourself beyond what you can manage…”
She paused as Mrs. Matson smiled. She had the most beautiful smile, Dilys thought. They were often like that, old people’s
smiles, holy, sort of, but naughty with it sometimes…
“Letter. Lay it. On. Thick. Dilys.”
“Do my best, dearie, you can be sure of that. And it’ll take me a bit of a while, seeing I’m not much of a writer, so I’m
going to make you nice and comfortable, and draw your curtains this end and you’re going to have your rest. And I’ll settle
down at the table there so I can keep an eye on you, make sure you’re behaving yourself. I’ll just nip out and get that photo
first, shall I, so you know I’ve got the right one.”
The photograph was where Mrs. Matson had said it would be, of course. It was of a very handsome young man. Dilys had noticed
a couple of pictures of him earlier in the album as she’d leafed through, one of them with Miss Anne down by the river, feeding
ducks. Here he was alone on a sort of balcony…no, it was the fire escape, of course, like Mrs. Matson had said, only the way
he was standing was so poetical you couldn’t help thinking balcony…you could see he was sending himself up, standing like
that, so it was funny already, and then…something to do with a carrot—he’d got one and put it between his teeth, like a rose?
Something like that. And Mr. Stadding had been there…No, of course, the young man
was
Mr. Stadding, so of course he’d remember…
She showed the picture to Mrs. Matson, settled her down for her rest, fetched her own writing things and got down to the letter.
It took her almost all morning, with several false starts and endless crossings out. Lay it on thick, Mrs. Matson had said,
but she didn’t want it to sound soppy or pathetic because Mrs. Matson wasn’t like that. She found that the plainer she made
it, the more she called a spade a spade, the righter it felt, so in the end it came out a good deal shorter than her first
attempts.
Dear Mr. Stadding,
I’m writing to you for Mrs. Matson. She can’t write because she’s paralysed and she can only just speak so the phone’s no
use either. She’s told me to send this picture along with the letter, so you can know it’s from her. She says to tell you
“Carrot.”
The other thing she said to tell you is she hasn’t got long. Motor neurone disease is what she has, and once you’ve got it
you just get worse, starting with your legs and working up. Mrs. Matson’s almost gone. I don’t know how long it will be, she’s
such a fighter, but I doubt she’ll see another winter.
The thing I want to tell you for myself is she’s absolutely all there still, in her mind, I mean. She never stops thinking
and remembering and working things out. So it’s no use trying to fob her off. She’ll see what you’re at, and she won’t give
up. She’ll try and get at it another way.
Now, there’s just something she’s anxious to get sorted before she goes. She hasn’t told me what it is and I’m not asking,
because it’s private, but it’s got to be something to do with the Cambi Road Association, or she wouldn’t be asking you. And
I can tell you from me she’s not going to go happy without it—she’s got herself into such a state fretting about it. She’s
killing herself, if you want my honest opinion. That’s no way to go, Mr. Stadding. It isn’t right.
Anyway, she wants to keep it private and so do you, she says, so her idea is I’m going to fix a tape recorder by her so she
can whisper into it, which is as much as she can do by way of talking, anyway. And I’ll stop my ears so I don’t hear anything,
and she wants me to bring the tape over for you to listen to, and then you can talk to her back the same way. So you’ll know
it’s only me that had the chance to know anything about it, and you can make up your mind about me when you see me, I suppose.
Saturday’s my day off, if that suits you, but we can get the other nurse in different days if you’d sooner. And there’s a
phone up here, so if you ring the number at the top and ask for the nursery wing, they’ll put you through.
Yours truly,
Dilys Roberts (Miss)
Mrs. Matson had actually slept, and when she woke her voice, though feeble, was more under her control. A little reluctantly
Dilys read her the letter, but she didn’t seem at all put out by its frankness and smiled and said, “Well done,” so Dilys
parcelled it up with the photograph and put it on the table in the hall to go with the afternoon post. Two morning later Mrs.
Stadding telephoned, obviously reluctant, to say that her husband could see Dilys the following Saturday morning. Dilys, with
Ellen’s help, had already looked up trains and found that though Market Drayton was only sixty miles away there wasn’t anything
that got there without taking all day and going all round the shop; and the buses were just as bad. So Mrs. Matson asked Mrs.
Thomas if Trevor Sweeting couldn’t take her. He was really the under-gardener, but mostly he did odd jobs and stuff, and anyway
Saturdays were supposed to be his days off too, but Mrs. Thomas must have got him in a good mood—she had a real trick for
that, Dilys had found; everyone seemed to eat out of her hand because it never crossed her mind they wouldn’t—so in the end
it all worked out.
T
he sixty miles took almost two hours along busy winding roads. Trevor listened to Radio One turned up loud. Dilys sat in the
back letting time drift past in a kind of half dream. Looking at all those photos with Mrs. Matson, it must have been, but
she found herself supposing she’d spent her life taking pictures of everything that had ever happened around her, so she’d
shelves and shelves of albums of her own she could use to fish stuff out of the long ago, the way Mrs. Matson did. Nursing
college, say, back at Tredegar. There’d’ve been an album for that. Who’d have been in it? Di Phillips, for a start, bleached
blond hair, pouty lips, always messing around with her uniform to get it a bit tighter where it showed—as if she needed it—and
waggling her bum at the senior consultant—a good nurse, mind you, and there’d been a dozen young doctors she could’ve taken
her pick of, instead of which she’d gone and got involved with one of the night porters, old enough to be her father almost,
and married him and stuck with him and had three kids, and he’d carried on being just a night porter but she’d gone back into
nursing and done very well, heading for matron last Dilys had heard…heard how? Somebody must’ve told her, and the rest, different
times, because Di was the sort you talked about…but if she didn’t know how she knew, how did she know she knew…? And what
about that other girl—she was a darling and there weren’t that many black nurses back then—but Dilys couldn’t remember a thing
about her, not her name, nothing she’d said or done, leave alone what happened to her after, only the glossy skin and the
big laughing mouth and the sideways glancing eyes, yes, just like one of Mrs. Matson’s photos. Bonnie Wincing now—it was the
other way with her because there’d been a photo to go on, the one in the newspapers and it had to be her because there couldn’t
be two people called that. Dilys didn’t remember much about her from Tredegar, except the name, but now the papers said she’d
given a patient ten times the drug he was supposed to be on and faked a card to make it look like the doctor prescribed it,
so she’d be in real trouble when the patient died, which he did. The doctor was a woman, that was the point, and she’d been
having it off with another doctor who Bonnie fancied. Looking at the photos in the papers, Dilys wouldn’t’ve known she’d ever
seen the face before…It was all gone, gone, except scraps, and most of your life is like that, really, if you thought about
it, even when you think there’s lots and lots you remember. Maybe there were people who had it all sorted and stored away
in their minds, like Mrs. Matson had with her albums, but most of us aren’t like that…
The car slowed right down. Trevor read the name on a gate.
“Looks like we’re here,” he shouted over the radio. “Fanning, wasn’t it? How long are you going to be, then?”
“I don’t know. Not very long. Half an hour?”
“Oh, that’s not so bad. I’ll put the car on the verge there and stretch my legs a bit. OK?”
The house must have been two small cottages once, because half of it had a slate roof and the other half was thatched, and
the windows didn’t line up—one of them you could see where the other front door had been. There was a tidy plain garden. When
Dilys was halfway up the flagged path from the gate, the door was opened by a small, stooped woman, neatly dressed in a wool-knit
skirt and twinset. Well into her seventies. Heart condition. Osteoporosis. Might last for years, might go this afternoon,
poor thing. Her voice was the twitter Dilys had heard on the telephone.