Touch and Go

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PROLOGUE (#ulink_8590faed-0af2-543b-956b-5f1837302ad0)

The woman had been beautiful. Now she was dying. The nurse had never seen the beauty nor would she have been greatly impressed if she had. To her this was simply another case of the kind she was supposed to specialize in because, it was said, she had the expertise.

‘I asked for someone trained in dealing with terminal cancers,’ the doctor had said when she arrived from the agency. ‘I understand you have that experience?’

‘Yes,’ she’d replied, adding no more.

They had been standing in the doorway of the bedroom, and he’d looked over to where the patient lay asleep.

‘She insisted she would not be hospitalized …’ He had sighed and shrugged his shoulders, but not casually. ‘They’d done all they could, anyway. That last tumour’s inoperable, and she wanted to die at home. She does know … if it’s any help to you.’

The nurse had nodded, making no comment.

‘You’ll only be required to stay a few days. I doubt if she’ll last the week.’ He had raised sad eyes to take in the luxury of the room as if the white and gold furniture, the peach-coloured velvet drapes at the big windows high above the muted roar of Fifth Avenue might in some measure mitigate the other misfortune. ‘Some of the staff have been kept on, and the housekeeper, Mrs Hermanos, has been with the lady for many years. I think you will find the place quite comfortable.’

Following his glance, the nurse had given a half-smile. ‘I’ve seen worse … Now I must attend to my duties.’

When he left the doctor was pleased by her attitude. With that blank face, those meek downcast eyes, the drab uniform worn without concession either to feminism or figure, he had had his doubts. But he trusted St Theresa’s Nursing Agency; there was nowhere else left to put your trust in with these cases.

I mustn’t get too used to this, the nurse thought as she unpacked her few personal belongings in one of the spare bedrooms, itself bigger than the whole of her walk-up flat in downtown Brooklyn.

Her duties proved not to be onerous but from habit she performed them well. The doctor called each day, staying no longer than half an hour to chat with the patient if she was awake, less if she was sleeping.

‘It’s only at night she’s restless,’ the nurse reported to him. ‘Seems it’s then she likes to talk. Night duty doesn’t bother me, I’m used to it. I get the hours off in the daytime when Mrs Hermanos sits with her but even then I prefer to think I’m still on call …’ If there had been in the nurse’s tone implicit criticism of a lay person by a professional, it was muted. The doctor was relieved; Mrs Hermanos seemed devoted to her mistress but the case needed someone with medical knowledge and expertise. The nurse had both.

‘So long as the patient is never allowed to be in pain,’ he said, anxiously.

The nurse shook her head. ‘The dosage you’ve prescribed has worked well so far, Doctor, and you can rely on me to see she doesn’t suffer unnecessarily. When she’s awake at night I’m always there and if she wants to talk, then I just let her go ahead. Lots of patients in her condition will ramble on to a stranger if they don’t have any family around. We learn not to listen overmuch.’

This was not strictly true. Although it was the nurse’s habit to take a book or a magazine into the sickroom to while away the long hours by the bedside, they remained largely unread. Establishing rapport by a sympathetic squeeze of the hand, murmured words of encouragement, and a proper attendance to the most trivial but essential matters of the patient’s comfort, these things came naturally to her and in this case had been very rewarding.

For the life that was too early drawing to a close—the patient being only in her forty-fifth year—had been an intriguing one, lived in many places, and as the memories came and went the thin voice would strengthen and take on vigour in their telling. To the nurse it was like trying to follow a film told in flashback, and much more fascinating than skimming the pages of any novel. She’d never been much of a reader, anyway, reality for her providing troubles enough without getting into fictional ones.

Some nights there were outbursts of vanity.

‘My make-up box … over there. Bring it, please.’

And the nurse would softly cream and powder the waxy skin, deftly touch with rose the hollowed cheeks and flick the little eyebrow pencil over the bony arches. Poor soul, she thought, that chemotherapy sure takes away the glamour …

She adroitly moved the table-lamp before handing over the mirror.

‘You look very nice, madam,’ she said, brushing the pale strands of fine hair across the high forehead, ‘your hair’s soft as a baby’s.’

‘Nonsense, Nurse. I look like a whited sepulchre, and you know it.’ The dying woman was no fool but she recognized a good effort when she saw it. ‘I’m sorry. You did your best …’

On the last night they had a fashion show.

‘In those wardrobes …’ The voice from the bed was breathless. ‘Open them up …’

The nurse did as she was told. ‘What will madam wear this evening?’ she asked, entering into the spirit, even as her eyes took in the tussore silk suits, the tweeds and worsteds, the riding habits with their satin stocks, the pretty day dresses and the avenue of formals, chiffons pale as streams of water, dark velvets starred with diamanté …

‘My Mandarin jacket … the scarlet one with the embroidered dragons. Put it round my shoulders.’

She was sitting up high on the pillows as the nurse slipped the red and gold garment across the bones standing out at the top of her arms.

‘I used to wear my rubies with this. They were specially set in gold for me … Get them for me. They’re in the jewel box.’

The nurse hesitated. ‘Madam will tire herself,’ she said, at her most soothing. ‘Perhaps another night …’

‘Not too many other nights …’ But the patient’s voice was faint, and her brow had puckered as it did before the onset of pain. The nurse took away the jacket, prepared and administered the relieving drug, and settled the sick woman gently down into fresh cool sheets, pulling away the soiled linen with no fuss as she had been trained to do. Such tasks were of no consequence to her, the incontinence of her patients simply a part of their illness and accepted by her as nature’s failure, not theirs.

She replaced the scarlet coat, and closed the wardrobe doors but not before letting her eyes wander once more across the richness stored inside.

She tidied the bedside table, washed up and replenished the water carafe in the adjoining bathroom, then settled herself in the big armchair near the bed with one of her magazines. She yawned. She had not had her usual sleep during the day because there had been some sort of crisis in the kitchen department.

Normally she never went downstairs, everything was found for her on this floor, even her meals being served to her in the room allocated for her stay. Sometimes they were brought to her by Leonie, the maid, a silent creature who the nurse had diagnosed as being subnormal, or by Mrs Hermanos herself. The nurse couldn’t make head or tail of Mrs Hermanos. On the surface she was friendly enough, though distant as if the nurse’s position was far inferior to her own in the household. As well it might be, for Mrs Hermanos was more than housekeeper to the dying lady, she was much too familiar with her for that, calling her by her first name and, in the nurse’s view, taking liberties.

Lunch that day had not arrived at one o’clock as it usually did, nor was there any sign of it an hour later so the nurse had gone down to investigate. She had found the kitchen in a state of chaos, and some sort of row going on between Mrs Hermanos and her husband, José. There was a broken cup on the table, and the remains of a plate on the floor by the sink where it had obviously been thrown at someone’s head. The nurse had heard it shatter as she came down the stairs, at the same time as she’d heard the yelling voices. Leonie was nowhere to be seen so the uproar was a private quarrel between the Hermanos but the nurse had witnessed all too many of such scenes in other houses to let it bother her, so she simply asked if she could please have her lunch, pronto, and left them to it. About half an hour later it did arrive at the hands of Mrs Hermanos who looked both chastened and defiant as if daring the nurse to comment. The nurse had heard enough to know what the row was about but saw no reason to pass any remark. It wasn’t her business anyhow.

José Hermanos’s position on the staff—if he had any at all—was uncertain. The doctor had said that Florence—Mrs Hermanos—had only married him recently and it was she who had introduced him into the household as an English butler. On this point the doctor was sceptical.

‘About as English as Hoboken,’ he growled, ‘and as for being a butler—a Spanish waiter more like! Florence now, well, she’s been around our lady for years … I don’t take to her myself but she keeps the place going, and she seems fond of her mistress.’

The nurse would not have put it in such terms. In her view Florence Hermanos had gotten herself a good job and was hanging in there, with expectations. However, she could be relied upon to run things smoothly enough, the invalid meals she served were both sensible and tasty even for a fast-declining appetite, and sometimes it was only through Florence’s coaxing that the patient could be persuaded to eat at all.

‘Madam tells me that she and Florence go back a long way,’ she remarked, ‘so she must have been in her service many years.’

‘I wouldn’t know.’ The doctor had only known his patient since she had arrived in New York for treatment, by which time the disease had manifested itself in a form both rapid and relentless.

‘She got no family of her own, then?’

‘Apparently not. Nor many friends either that I can see. A firm of lawyers manages her affairs … It’s none of my business, of course,’ he went on brusquely, for he was by nature averse to gossip, ‘I’m only responsible for what physical wellbeing she has left … and to see that she dies with dignity.’

‘That is my duty also, Doctor,’ said the nurse quietly as she showed him to the door.