Part 1 (1/2)

Undue Influence

Mrs. Margery Gosse was 82, a widow, self-reliant, and independent-minded. But people in their eighties, especially when they live alone, are p.r.o.ne to accidents. Mrs. Gosse trip- ped, fell, and fractured a femur in her leg. Luckily she still had one blood relative, a niece, who insisted on taking care of Mrs.

Gosse after she left the hospital. Luckily? Taking care? A story of ”loneliness and fear and hopelessness”. . .

Why, Evelyn!” Mrs. Gosse exclaimed. ”What a lovely sur- prise! I never dared to expect you.”

”And how very, very naughty of you not to have let us know what happened straight away,” Evelyn Ha.s.sall said, stooping to kiss the old wrinkled forehead, sallow against the snowy white of the pillows. ”To leave it to that daily of yours to tell uswhich it took her a fortnight to think of doing. We only had her letter this morning.”

”Ah, Mrs. Jimson, so well-meaning, but she shouldn't have bothered you.” Mrs. Gosse smiled up at her niece as she stood by the bedside, holding a bunch of jonquils and some magazines.

”But it's sweet of you to have come, dear. I know what a busy life you lead.”

”Well, really! The hospital people should have phoned me at once.”

Mrs. Gosse was touched by the concern in Evelyn's voice. Yet the truth was that the old woman was a little surprised by it. It was two years since Evelyn had been over'to see her, and Evelyn and Oliver lived only 50 miles away, a distance which, if they had happened to feel, say, like dropping in for lunch some Sunday, was nothing nowadays. So Mrs. Gosse had slipped into the habit of believing that her niece and her husband did not really want to be bothered too much about her.

That occasion, two years ago, when Evelyn, as now, had come over bearing gifts, had been Mrs. Gosse's eightieth birthday party.

144.

A lovely party. Her stepdaughter Judith, with her two little girls, had been there, and of course Mrs. Gosse's darling husband An- drew had still been alive then. He'd had his coronary about six months later, although he had been a year younger than his wife and no one had ever dreamed he would die before her. Evelyn and Oliver had not 'been able to come to the funeral because they had been away on a Caribbean cruise, but they had sent a beautiful wreath.

The strong scent of the jonquils that Evelyn now laid on the bedside locker, saying that she supposed a nurse would bring a vase for them if she rang, made Mrs. Gosse suddenly remember that wreath. And that made her think of death. Naturally she had been thinking of death a good deal since her accident, and sometimes it had been with a dreamy sort of fascination. But more often it had been with a quietly stubborn resistance. She did not want to die yet.

Evelyn sat down on the chair by the bed and undid the collar of her fur coat. She was a pretty woman in a pallid, fluffy-haired way, not much over 40 though she looked rather more, because behind the pink and white softness of her face there was a certain hardness of bone, a tightness of the muscles.

”Now tell me what happened,” she said. ”Mrs. Jimson isn't the most literate of letter writers.”

”Well, dear, really nothing much happened,” Mrs. Gosse replied.

”I fell, that was all. I was on the way to the kitchen to get my breakfast, and you know those three steps in the pa.s.sage1 just tripped there and fell. And I don't really remember much about it, because apparently I faintedand d'you know, I've never, I mean never, fainted in my life before. Then when I came to I was here.

So I hardly know anything about it.

”But I've been told Mrs. Jimson came in at her usual time and found me and got Dr. Bryant at once, and he called for an ambu- lance and sent me here. And it turns out that what I've got is a fractured femur and I'm going to be stuck here for quite a time.

But really I'm very lucky, because I understand a good many people of my age would simply have got pneumonia and died. And they're so kind to me herenuns, you know, mostly Iris.h.i.+'ve never been called 'darlin” so often in my life before!”

”Well, it just shows I've always been right, doesn't it?” Evelyn said. ”You shouldn't be living alone. I hope Oliver and I can per- suade you to be more reasonable about that now.”

Actually Mrs. Gosse could not remember when Evelyn had pro- tested at her living alone. Judith, Andrew's daughter, had tried hard after Andrew's death to persuade her stepmother to live with her and her husband, Ronald. But Ronald, who was in the oil business, had just been posted to Venezuela, and Mrs. Gosse had not been able to see herself, past 80, pulling up all her roots and going to live in such a strange and distant place. Besides, lov- ing as Judith and Ronald had always been to her and dearly ah she loved their children, Mrs. Gosse had always had a dread of becoming a burden to others, particularly to those for whom she cared the most.

”Anyway, when they let you out, of course you'll come to us,”

Evelyn went on. ”No, don't argue about it. You couldn't possibly go home alone. You must come and stay with us as long as you need to.”

”That's very kind of you, dear,” Mrs. Gosse said. ”It's a very tempting suggestion. I suppose I'll find it rather difficult to man- age on my own for a time. I'll think it over.”

But really there was nothing to think over. It was obvious that even when Mrs. Gosse could move about on her two aluminum crutches and go to the bathroom by herself, she could not possibly have looked after herself in her own apartment, with only Mrs.

Jimson coming in to help her in the mornings. It was inevitable that she should accept Evelyn's invitation. So when at last Mrs.

Gosse left the hospital it was in an ambulance that was to carry her to the Ha.s.salls' home.

Mrs. Gosse was rather dismayed by the ambulance. She had imagined she was well enough to make the journey by car. But Evelyn reminded her that her spare bedroom was on the second floor and that as Mrs. Gosse would not be able to manage the stairs, she would have to be carried upstairs on a stretcher. Re- gretfully Mrs. Gosse thought of her own apartment in which she would quite soon have been able to hobble out into the garden to look at the crocuses coming out under the beech trees and to sit on the bench there in any early spring suns.h.i.+ne that might brighten an occasional day, and to pick big yellow bunches of forsythia for the vases in the sitting room.

In the Ha.s.salls' house she would be cooped up in one room until she could go up and down the stairs, and who knew how many weeks that would be? However, it was a very attractive room with pale gray walls and a dark red carpet and pearly white closets and some nice photographs of Greece on the walls and a beautiful little bathroom opening out of it.

Oliver carried Mrs. Gosse's luggage up for her. He was a short round man of 50, a stockbroker, with plump jowls and a bald head spa.r.s.ely fringed with dark hair. His eyes were dark, rather pro- tuberant, and looked oddly intense in the pink placidity of his face.

”You see, there's a lovely view from here,” he said, waving at the window. ”Nothing between you and the downs. You'll enjoy that, won't you? We thought of that when we asked you to come.”

”How kind you both are, how very kind to me,” Mrs. Gosse said, and just then would have been immensely pleased if she had been able to think of something more to say to make up to the Ha.s.salls for the fact that in the past somehow she had never thought of them as particularly kind people. But no doubt there would be opportunities later to show her grat.i.tude. She only added that she was feeling rather tired and would like to go to bed.

”And you're longing for a cup of tea too, aren't you?” Oliver said and hurried out so that Evelyn could help Mrs. Gosse undress and get into the bed in which the electric blanket had thoughtfully been turned on, waiting for her.

The next three weeks were very pleasant. It was true that Mrs.

Gosse found them rather quiet. She missed the bustle of the nurses round her and the visits of her bridge-playing circle and of faithful Mrs. Jimson. Evelyn sat with her aunt when she could and Oliver generally paid her a visit when he got home from the City, but Evelyn lived a busy life, filled with voluntary work and committee meetings, and Oliver was usually tired in the eve- nings. And unfortunately the one thing the Ha.s.salls' spare bed- room lacked was a telephone.

Mrs. Gosse loved chatting with her friends on the telephone and now that she was too far away for them to be able to drop in to see her, she would have liked to be able to ring them up and set- tle down for a nice long comfortable gossip. Always, of course, finding out from the operator how much the call had cost and pay- ing the sum to Evelyn, for Mrs. Gosse would no more have thought of telephoning at the Ha.s.salls' expense than of allowing them to pay for the stamps on the numerous letters she wrote to her friends and which Evelyn took away to mail for her.

It was the fact that none of these letters was answered that first began to worry Mrs. Gosse. She could not understand it. Her friends were not neglectful people. Always, when she or any of them had gone away on holiday, they had sent one another pic- ture postcards. At Christmas, even when they were meeting every few days, they sent each other the season's greetings. And those who, because of infirmities or domestic problems, had not been able to visit her in the hospital had written to her.

But now there was silence. It seemed very odd. She began to get querulous about it and one day actually asked Evelyn if she was sure she had remembered to mail the letters.

Evelyn laughed and said, ”Of course, darling. I don't forget things.”

”But I haven't had any answers,” Mrs. Gosse said. ”I don't un- derstand it.”

”You're too impatient,” Evelyn said. ”Very few people answer letters by return mail. I know I never do.”

”But you're quite, quite sure you did post my letters, aren't you?”

”Quite, quite sure.”

Mrs. Gosse accepted it. Yet a nagging worry remained. She began to feel cut off from the world in a way that slightly scared her. But that, of course, was absurd. There was nothing for her to be afraid of. It was just that her relative helplessness and the long hours she sometimes had to spend quite alone were begin- ning to get on her nerves.

Then one day she and Oliver had a rather curious conversation.

It was Mrs. Gosse herself who thoughtlessly began it. Oliver had come into her room to bring her coffee after a particularly de- licious dinner that Evelyn had cooked. She was an excellent cook and she understood how much it meant to an invalid to have a real meal served with s.h.i.+ning silver and a pretty tray cloth. That evening there had even been a few snowdrops in a little gla.s.s jug on the tray. Mrs. Gosse was touched by the thoughtfulness.

”You're really so good to me, both of you,” she said to Oliver.

”You'll see, I won't forget it.”

Rather to her surprise he answered with a self-conscious laugh.