She sits in the picture window of this once grand old house. There is no expression on her soft, lined face. There is no movement in her small, thin frame. Occasionally, her rheumy eyes close, for a moment, for a restful moment, and slowly open again.
She is dressed well today. She is wearing a brown skirt with a scattering of filigree flowers, which falls respectfully just below her knees even while she is sitting. She is wearing a plain white blouse and a pretty crocheted cardigan. She is wearing a string of blue beads under the collar of her blouse, only showing through at the front.
She is dressed well today. Dignified.
Sometimes, she slips down in her chair and her skirt rides up, just a little, and her blouse and her cardigan bunch uncomfortably against her shoulder blades. Until someone comes to help her back up.
She has a pair of misshapen slippers on feet too crumpled to fit shoes anymore. Her hair has recently been washed and set; the thin cloudy curls are still tight, still defined, framing her head with a halo of autumn down. Except for the beads, the only jewellery she displays is a thin wedding band. It looks as though it pinches, drawing in the old flesh like a corseted waist.
You can see where other rings have been. You can see where they have left their mark, grooves on her twisted fingers, flesh and metal wearing into one so that even now they have been prised apart, the ghost of their presence remains. A memory holding on.
Grooves on twisted fingers.
Rheumy eyes close, for a moment, for a restful moment, and slowly open again.
The sun catches briefly through the window. It never catches here for long. It falls across the rice paper of her wrist, falls across the arm of the chair as though painting in an unseen bond.
It’s a good chair. It’s her usual chair. The tall back tilts at just the right angle, the cushion is at just the right height. A patina of use has brought the leather to a bright shine, buffed by a hundred sleeves, gradually moulded by the seats of a hundred occupants before. Expecting a hundred more to come.
It’s her usual chair.
It’s the chair that sits in the picture window.
Behind it, the cheerful voice of the television drones on. The television is always on. The television is a ‘bit of company’. It seems out of place in here. It seems sharp and vulgar against the regency fireplace and the jardinière of aspidistra. With the volume up, it seems too loud. This room calls for the gentle crackle of an old gramophone to hang like smoke around the high ceiling and the dusty chandelier. It calls for the pastel fitted carpet to be rolled away and the dance floor reclaimed from beneath; calls for the shuffle of soft feet to waltz in elegance with a string quartet. But such calls are lost under the constant company of the droning television.
Someone passes down the hall, pauses to poke their head around the door, looking for something, looking for someone else, and moving on.
Rheumy eyes close, for a moment, for a restful moment, and slowly open again.
This room used to be big enough to waltz in. At some point a dividing wall has been put in. Two smaller spaces are more useful than one. Smaller spaces are friendlier. Smaller spaces are easier to heat. In this room, all of the chairs face towards the television. All except the chair in the picture window. In the other room the chairs are grouped together to encourage conversation. In the other room there are tables for jigsaws and board games. In the other room there is a small, upright piano.
Sometimes, a man comes in to play the piano. She will spend an afternoon listening to old songs enthusiastically jangling through the big house, listening to unpractised voices belting out old words, whole choirs joining for the chorus.
Sometimes, the television is even turned off.
The house stretches up and out from the picture window. It stretches seemingly endlessly. People often joke that they could get lost. They rarely do. The house has wings and kitchens. It has a tower and a very modern lift. It has two whole floors of bedrooms, some ensuite, and it has a palatial staircase that carries its traffic past sumptuous portraits and gilt-framed mirrors as though it led the way to heaven itself.
Two children are playing on the staircase. Cherubs on the ladder. Bright eyes peeking around banisters, laughter cascading down each stone step like tinkling on ivories.
Better than the man on the piano.
Pasted over by the company of the droning television.
Sometimes, they take her in to dinner with the others. She doesn’t need to go. Her meals are sludge and chemical, bypassing taste and filling her stomach at the attachment of a tube and the flick of a switch. Sometimes, they take her slowly, oh so very slowly, past where the week’s menu is pinned to the board and into the school-dinner smell and cutlery clatter. On special occasions: Christmas and Easter with the others.
There are often children here. The older ones will look uncomfortable and smile blankly only when required. The younger ones will play. The tiny ones will beam or wail and either way will fill old hearts with a comfortable, welcome warmth.
It’s very warm in the house. The radiators are on high. The radiators are always on high: perpetually overheated winter.
Outside, it is spring.
She sits in the picture window and the picture window looks out over a small part of the perfectly kept lawn, until the lawn reaches the behemoth hill, field rolling up into field so that unless you are close and peering upwards, there is no room for sky. All you can see is green. A picture of green. The house nestles up against the feet of the hill, and the hill looks down.
Rheumy eyes close, for a moment, for a restful moment, and slowly open again.
There are sheep in one of the fields. They have lambs and the lambs are still young enough to have their tails, flicking exuberantly as they bounce on one another, on their mothers, up the hill, higher and higher until they are lost to sight behind a bough of the cedar tree.
A single bough is all there is of the cedar tree in the picture window. You can’t see the scar-rutted trunk or the high, high top, but you can tell that it dominates the back of the gardens by the way that its arms reach so far over. You can tell that its stretching roots must scratch at the very toes of the house. You can see that its limbs are as gnarled and swollen as her hands, its memory as long and silent as her past.
Grooves on twisted fingers.
The children on the stairs are on their way out, gathered up, coats buttoned, hats on. A woman in a nurse’s uniform comes down the hall, exchanges a word or two with their mother and is gone again. A flash. A busy flash. There is always someone busying through. Always someone busy going somewhere, busy doing something. It’s a very busy house.
Sometimes, somebody brings in a dog. It’s a big dog with long legs and a droopy head. It stands beside her and rests its muzzle gently on her lap and looks up with soft, doleful eyes.
Sometimes, it drools.
On the other side of the picture window to the cedar branch, there is a bird feeding station. Like the cedar, you can’t see it very well from here; it was never meant to be seen from here. There is no seed and the nuts are almost gone. A coconut shell rotates slowly in the breeze, picked clean to the bone. It needs refilling. But the birds still come: robins and great tits, blackbirds and wrens, clinging to the metal casings or foraging for leftovers in the grass beneath, tiny heads cocking to one side and another, wings flapping, chests puffed.
You used to see more sparrows in the garden.
There are hardly any sparrows these days.
Grooves on twisted fingers.
Droning television.
Stops.
For a moment.
Restful moment.
The TV comes back on again suddenly. Loudly. A smart looking woman has found the secret flap on the front where the buttons hide and is trying to change the channel.
There is supposed to be a remote control somewhere. Obviously she couldn’t find the remote.
There is a waft of perfume about her. Expensive. Subtle on its own but sickly where it catches and mingles with the treacle scent of lilies on the mantelpiece. The woman has made an effort today. Like Sunday Best. Visiting in Sunday Best, hands waving in confused panic, searching for the button, any button, searching in panic for any button…
The cheerful screaming goes down to cheerful shouting. Still loud. Normal loud. Droning on.
In the distance, a doorbell rings.
Rheumy eyes close, for a moment.
An assistant appears, called by the sudden change in the television sound. You can tell the assistants by the colour of the uniforms. Theirs are a light blue with white edging at the collar. The nurses’ are dark blue. Matron wears a suit. The assistant and the smart looking woman in Sunday Best have a chat, share a laugh.
Sometimes, she has a visitor.
Not often.
He doesn’t stay for long.
Grooves on twisted fingers.
Before she leaves, the assistant goes around the room to see if any of the old ladies might like a cup of tea.
There are no old men in the television room just now. There are very few old men in the house. The men have not proved to be quite so patient.
She doesn’t ask the lady in the picture window (tubes and chemicals) but on her way past she does pat the rice paper skin where the sun has gone, and asks if she is all right. Cheerfully. Loudly.
Droning television.
There is the slightest incline of a head. The slightest whisper of a smile. Content, the assistant bustles away.
The Sunday Best woman has returned to her seat. She says something to the old lady she has come to see about the old lady in the window, but the lady she is visiting shushes her:
They don’t know much about that one. She keeps herself to herself. She doesn’t join in much. Though they did bring her in to the other room for the slide show on garden wildlife. And that big girl who organises the sing-songs did sit with her for a while last week. And the dog always goes to see her: the big dog with the droopy head. But there’s no point trying to talk to her.
And the conversation moves on while they wait for their tea. Droning like the television. Droning through the room with the regency fireplace and the jardinière of aspidistra and the high ceiling dusty chandelier.
And she sits in the picture window of this once grand old house. No expression on her soft, lined face. No movement in her small, thin frame. The carers have dressed her well today: a brown skirt with a scattering of filigree flowers, a plain white blouse and a crocheted cardigan. Grooves on twisted fingers. Shine on the leather of her usual chair.
And she sits.
Rheumy eyes close, for a moment.
For a restful moment.
And slowly open again.
(First published in ‘Sic’ by The Knot)