Read Online The Real Thing by Doris Lessing - Free Book Online Page B

daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, husbands, relatives of all kinds, and these were always dropping in with flowers and fruit in what seemed to the others like a continuing family party. Mrs Joan Lee and Mrs Rosemary Stamford demanded the movable telephones several times a day to organize dentists’ and doctors’ appointments, to remind their families of this or that, or to ring up grocers’ or greengrocers’ shops to order food the happy-go-lucky ones at home were bound to forget. They might be in the hospital with wombproblems, but in spirit they had hardly been here at all. Now they were forced to be here, to listen. The fourth bed on that side held the joker, Miss Cook. Opposite her was the very old woman, the widow. Beside her, ‘the horsey one’, a handsome young woman with the high, clear, commanding voice of her class, who was neither chummy nor standoffish, defended a stubborn privacy with books and her Walkman. Atavistic dislikes had caused the others to agree (when she was out of the room) that her abortion on the National Health was selfish: she should have gone to a private hospital, for with those clothes and general style she could certainly afford to. Next to her a recently married girl who had miscarried lay limp in her bed, like a drowned girl, pale and sad but brave. Next to her and opposite Mildred Grant was a dancer, no longer young, and so now she had to teach others how to dance. She had fallen and as a result suffered internal hurt. She was depressed but putting a good face on it. ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you!’ she often cried, full of vivacity. This was her motto, and, too, ‘It’s a great life if you don’t weaken!’
    The women were shifting about in their beds. Their eyes shone in the lights from the car park. An hour passed. The night nurse heard the sound of weeping from outside, and came in. She stood by the bed and said, ‘Mrs Grant, what are you doing? My patients have to get some sleep. And you should, too. You’re going to have an examination in the morning. There’s nothing to be afraid of, but you should be rested.’
    The sobbing continued.
    ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said the nurse. ‘If she doesn’t stop in a few minutes, ring the bell.’ And she went out.
    Mildred Grant was now crying more softly. It was a dreary automatic sobbing and by now it was badly on their nerves. In every one of them dwelled the unappeasedchild with her rights and her claims, and they were being forced to remember her, and how much it had cost them all to subdue her. The pale girl who had miscarried was weeping. Silently, but they saw the tears glisten on her cheeks. The gallant dancer lay curled in a foetal position, her thumb in her mouth. The ‘horsey one’-she, in fact, loathed horses-had slipped the Walkman’s earpieces back on, but she was watching, and probably unable to stop herself listening through whatever sounds she had chosen to shut out the noise of weeping. The women were all aware of each other, watched each other, afraid that one of them would really crack and even begin screaming.
    Mrs Rosemary Stamford, a tough matron, the last person you’d think would give way, said in a peevish end-of-my-tether voice, ‘They should move her into another ward. It’s not fair. I’m going to talk to them.’
    But before she could move. Miss Cook was getting out of her bed. She was not only large and unwieldy but full of rheumatism, and it took time. Then, slowly, she put on a flowered dressing gown, padded because she said her room was cold and she couldn’t afford what was needed to keep it heated, and bent to pull on her slippers. Was she going out to appeal to the nurses? To the toilet? At any rate, watching her took their minds off Mildred Grant.
    It was to Mildred Grant she went. She settled herself in the chair that had been occupied for all those hours by the husband, and laid a firm hand on Mildred’s shoulder.
    ‘Now then, love,’ she said, or commanded. ‘I want