The Private Parts of Women

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Authors: Lesley Glaister
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    And more and more and more. I hardly even cried. I pegged the prints up to dry, like so much washing, and went to bed.
    I woke thinking I will not get involved, feeling cross with the little man who had presumed so much. Just because I live next door to Trixie doesn’t make her my responsibility. I don’t want responsibility, that is the point, that is why I am here. Just because I’m a woman he thinks I must care. How wrong about someone can you be?
    And then this morning I saw Trixie in her garden. I was about to go out to hang some knickers and T-shirts on the line, but when I saw she was out there, I waited. I didn’t want to talk to her or anyone. I wanted only to work, though I was losing heart with all the wandering and searching. I needed a subject.
    Trixie was wearing a pale green raincoat. As I watched from the back window, she knelt slowly and stiffly down on a cushion and began to weed her garden. There’s not a weed to be seen but she was pulling something like invisible hairs from the soil. And then she leant forward and stooped right down low with her face only inches from a clump of golden crocuses, glowing as if they had electric light-bulbs inside, grown so quickly from the little green spears she’d pointed out. She was quite still. I couldn’t see whether her eyes were shut or not but she looked as if she was engaged in an act of worship or devotion. Embarrassed to be spying on her in this attitude, I turned away from the window, wishing I could capture her like that, on film.
    Next thing, I heard a cry. I looked out again and saw that Trixie had fallen forward, her face in the flowers, her legs unfolding awkwardly behind her. I went out, through the gate. Her face had broken the crocuses.
    â€˜Trixie …’ I was thinking about strokes, heart attacks, all the things that lie in wait for old people, the things that have punctuated so many of Richard’s (and my own) nights. ‘Are you all right?’
    She turned her head to the side. There was yellow pollen on her cheek and soil between her lips. ‘Perfectly, thank you,’ she said with such aplomb I almost laughed.
    â€˜I heard you shout. Did you fall?’
    â€˜Just trying to get up, dear. Always clumsy, always was.’
    I struggled to help her to her feet. I hadn’t realised how big she was, not tall, but solid and sturdy under her layers of clothes. When she was up I helped her inside, she was limping badly, when she was sitting down on a kitchen chair, I saw that she had scraped her shin and knee.
    â€˜I’ll make some tea, shall I?’ I said. ‘But we’d better wash that.’ Her stocking was ruined and dark gritty blood was slowly oozing. I could feel my morning oozing away too and felt guilty for minding. She wouldn’t let me lift her skirt to unfasten her stocking so I cut it open with scissors. A child’s graze is different; tight, healthy skin skimmed off and bright healthy blood speckling underneath. Robin used to wriggle and scream while I bathed his grazed knees in warm water with TCP but as soon as he had a plaster on he’d be proud and happy.
    â€˜Look,’ he’d say to anyone at all, ‘I’ve graved myself.’
    But old skin is loose. It tears and hangs in flimsy rags. The blood is thick and dark, it wells up sluggish and stubborn.
    â€˜Perhaps you should go to A and E,’ I suggested.
    â€˜What’s that when it’s at home?’
    â€˜Accident and Emergency. You know, Casualty. I’ll go out and phone for a taxi…’
    â€˜No, no.’
    I started dabbing at her knee with Dettol, since that’s all she had, and tissues. She made a strange quiet groan and I looked up to see that her face had turned the colour of putty and her eyelids were fluttering. I stuck a couple of pieces of lint over the grazes with some scraps of plaster. ‘I’d better make your tea,’ I said, frightened

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