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'Is that my Johnny?' the old lady asked again, her thin white hands up near
her face fluttering like two weak, chained birds.
'Naw, it's no your Johnny, Miss Carlisle,' the girl shouted again, in that
flat, even raising of the voice that indicates one is talking not in anger or
for emphasis but to somebody who is deaf. 'Now, you away back tae yer seat;
ah'll be through to put you to your bed soon, all right?' The girl turned Miss
Carlisle around gently with one hand and carefully blocked her from the
doorway, half closing the door.
'Look,' the girl said to me. 'Ah'm awfy sorry, hen, but ah canny let ye in; ah
just canny. Ah've got ma hands full here as it is, ye know?'
'Are you sure it's not my Johnny, dear?' said the faint, shaky voice from the
hallway.
'Well,' I said, 'I'm just going to stay here until you do let me in.'
'But ah just canny. Honest. Ah just canny. Ah'm sorry.' There was a crash
from the background, and the lass glanced behind her. 'Ah've got tae go now.
Ah've just got tae. Sorry& '
'Look; you're risking civil proceed-' I began,- but the door closed and I
heard a lock snick.
I could just make out the muffled words from behind the door. 'Naw, Miss
Carlisle, it's no& '
I decided to wait. I would try again later and see if sheer persistence paid
off. I wondered if this girl was the night shift or if she would be replaced.
I put down my kit-bag on the step and sat on it. I fished out my copy of the
Orthography and read a few passages by the slowly fading light from the still
clear sky.
I couldn't settle, though, and after a while got up and walked round the
house. There was a locked gate to one side but a clear passageway on the
other. Tall wheeled rubbish bins in grey and yellow were lined against the
roughcast wall beneath a black metal fire escape. The back garden was full of
white sheets and grey blankets, hung out to dry and dangling limply in the
still air. I walked round the back of the
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all house. I tried the back door, gently, but it was locked.
Then I heard a tapping noise. I expected it was going to be the girl in the
nurse's uniform, shooing me away, but it was the same old lady who'd appeared
behind the nurse earlier: Miss Carlisle. She was wearing a dark
dressing-gown, standing at a small window to the side of the wing that
overlooked the farm lane. She tapped again and motioned to me. I went over
and stood under the window. She fiddled with something at the bottom of the
window-frame. After a while the window cracked open, pivoting horizontally
about its centre line. She lowered her head.
'Ssh,' she said, putting one thin, milk-coloured finger to her lips. I nodded
and mirrored the gesture. She motioned me in. I looked around. It was
getting dark and hard to see well, but there didn't appear to be anybody
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watching. I pushed my kit-bag through first, then scrambled over the sill.
Her room was small and smelled& of old person; of bodily wastes that were
somehow genteel because the failing system had done little processing on their
raw materials, so that the offensive became unobjectionable. There was a
faint scent of something pleasant, too; lilacs, I thought. I could make out a
wardrobe, drawers, a dressing table and a small chair. There was a narrow
single bed, its covers disturbed as if she'd just got up.
'I always knew you'd come back, dear,' she said, and gave me what was probably
meant to be a fierce hug. She was tiny and so frail; really she just leaned
against me and put her arms round my back. Her tiny head was against my
breast. I looked down into translucent, wispily white hair; as my eyes
adjusted to the gloom, I could see that the skin on her scalp was very pale
pink, and covered in little faint brown patches. She gave a sigh.
I put my arms round her and gave her the gentlest of hugs, fearful of crushing
her.
'Dear Johnny,' she sighed. 'At last.'
I closed my eyes, holding her lightly to me. We stayed like that, holding
each other for a while, until it gradually dawned on me that she had fallen
asleep.
I pulled carefully back, unclasped her hands from the small of my back, and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]