Read Online Sunstroke and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley - Free Book Online
Authors: Tessa Hadley
Ads: Link
you.
Hilary helped. Several times she carried the chamber pot down one and a half flights of stairs, holding the banister rail, watching her feet carefully in the gloom (there was only the one bulb in the hallway, which Neil had switched on when they first came in). She covered whatever was inside the pot with a piece of newspaper, then tipped it into the lavatory without looking and flushed the chain. Thankfully it had a good strong flush. She stood listening to voices downstairs, a long way off as if they came from underground, from a basement room perhaps: Neil’s voice and others, male and female, subdued but nonetheless breaking out into laughter sometimes. Opening off the landing above the lavatory Hilary found a filthy bathroom, with a torn plastic curtain at the window, overgrown with black mould. An ancient rusted red-painted reel wound with canvas rope was secured to the wall beside the window, with instructions on how to lower it as an escape harness in case of fire. She ran the bath taps for a while, but although the pipes gave out buckings and bellowing noises and hiccuped gouts of tea-coloured cold water into the grit and dirt in the bottom of the bath, she couldn’t get either tap to run hot.
—There’s no hot water, Sheila said. —This is a squat: what did you think? Everyone goes into the halls to bathe. We’re lucky to have electricity: one of the guys knew how to reconnect it. You could ask Neil for the electric kettle. What do you want hot water for anyway?
—I thought you might like a wash. I thought I could put some things in to soak.
—Don’t worry about it. I’ll wash in the morning. We can take all this stuff to the launderette later.
Although they had always lived so close together in the forced intimacy of the vicarage, where there was only one lavatory and fractious queues for the bathroom in the mornings, the sisters had been prudish in keeping their bodily functions hidden from one another. This was partly in scalded reaction to their mother, who poked curiously in the babies’ potties to find swallowed things, and delivered sanitary towels to the girls’ room with abandoned openness, as if she didn’t know that the boys saw. They had even always, since they stopped being little girls, undressed quickly with their backs turned, or underneath their nightdresses. It was a surprise how small the step seemed, once Hilary had taken it, over into this new bodily intimacy of shared secret trouble and mess. Sheila’s pains, she began to understand, had a rhythm to them: first a strong pang, then a pause, then a sensation as if things were coming away inside her. After that she might get ten or fifteen minutes’ respite. When the pain was at its worst, Hilary rubbed her back, or Sheila gripped her hand and squeezed it, hard and painfully, crushing the bones together.
—Damn, damn, damn, she swore in a sing-song moan while she rocked backwards and forwards; tears squeezed out of her shut eyes and ran down her cheeks.
—Are you sorry? Hilary said, humbled.
—How could I possibly be sorry? Sheila snapped. —You think I want a
baby
?
She said the pains had begun at three in the afternoon. She told Hilary at some point that if they were still going on in the morning they would have to call an ambulance and get her into hospital: she explained in a practical voice that women could haemorrhage and die if these things wentwrong. By ten o’clock, though, the worst seemed to be over. There hadn’t been any bad pains for over an hour, the bleeding was almost like a normal period. When Neil came upstairs Sheila wanted a cup of tea and a hot-water bottle.
—You’ll have to take Hilary out, she told him, —and buy her something to eat.
Hilary had eaten some sandwiches on the coach at lunchtime. She hadn’t had anything since then; she didn’t feel hungry but she felt light-headed and her hands were shaking.
—I’m fine, she said hastily.—I don’t want anything.
—Don’t be
Hilary helped. Several times she carried the chamber pot down one and a half flights of stairs, holding the banister rail, watching her feet carefully in the gloom (there was only the one bulb in the hallway, which Neil had switched on when they first came in). She covered whatever was inside the pot with a piece of newspaper, then tipped it into the lavatory without looking and flushed the chain. Thankfully it had a good strong flush. She stood listening to voices downstairs, a long way off as if they came from underground, from a basement room perhaps: Neil’s voice and others, male and female, subdued but nonetheless breaking out into laughter sometimes. Opening off the landing above the lavatory Hilary found a filthy bathroom, with a torn plastic curtain at the window, overgrown with black mould. An ancient rusted red-painted reel wound with canvas rope was secured to the wall beside the window, with instructions on how to lower it as an escape harness in case of fire. She ran the bath taps for a while, but although the pipes gave out buckings and bellowing noises and hiccuped gouts of tea-coloured cold water into the grit and dirt in the bottom of the bath, she couldn’t get either tap to run hot.
—There’s no hot water, Sheila said. —This is a squat: what did you think? Everyone goes into the halls to bathe. We’re lucky to have electricity: one of the guys knew how to reconnect it. You could ask Neil for the electric kettle. What do you want hot water for anyway?
—I thought you might like a wash. I thought I could put some things in to soak.
—Don’t worry about it. I’ll wash in the morning. We can take all this stuff to the launderette later.
Although they had always lived so close together in the forced intimacy of the vicarage, where there was only one lavatory and fractious queues for the bathroom in the mornings, the sisters had been prudish in keeping their bodily functions hidden from one another. This was partly in scalded reaction to their mother, who poked curiously in the babies’ potties to find swallowed things, and delivered sanitary towels to the girls’ room with abandoned openness, as if she didn’t know that the boys saw. They had even always, since they stopped being little girls, undressed quickly with their backs turned, or underneath their nightdresses. It was a surprise how small the step seemed, once Hilary had taken it, over into this new bodily intimacy of shared secret trouble and mess. Sheila’s pains, she began to understand, had a rhythm to them: first a strong pang, then a pause, then a sensation as if things were coming away inside her. After that she might get ten or fifteen minutes’ respite. When the pain was at its worst, Hilary rubbed her back, or Sheila gripped her hand and squeezed it, hard and painfully, crushing the bones together.
—Damn, damn, damn, she swore in a sing-song moan while she rocked backwards and forwards; tears squeezed out of her shut eyes and ran down her cheeks.
—Are you sorry? Hilary said, humbled.
—How could I possibly be sorry? Sheila snapped. —You think I want a
baby
?
She said the pains had begun at three in the afternoon. She told Hilary at some point that if they were still going on in the morning they would have to call an ambulance and get her into hospital: she explained in a practical voice that women could haemorrhage and die if these things wentwrong. By ten o’clock, though, the worst seemed to be over. There hadn’t been any bad pains for over an hour, the bleeding was almost like a normal period. When Neil came upstairs Sheila wanted a cup of tea and a hot-water bottle.
—You’ll have to take Hilary out, she told him, —and buy her something to eat.
Hilary had eaten some sandwiches on the coach at lunchtime. She hadn’t had anything since then; she didn’t feel hungry but she felt light-headed and her hands were shaking.
—I’m fine, she said hastily.—I don’t want anything.
—Don’t be
Similar Books
