She started to cry. She cries like her mother used to, almost noiselessly and certainly unexpectedly. I pricked her with my question. I shouldn’t have said anything but I wanted to stand in her shoes, to feel her frustration and indeed her sadness. She talked of the humiliation of relying on others to do everything from going to the toilet to dressing. She is bed-bound, chair-bound, room-bound. And there she was just before her fall walking, albeit with an aid, around the corridors, and outside if the weather was fine, sometimes four times a day. Poor love. Well, might she cry. But she doesn’t. So stoic, so strong, so brave. What is your perfume? I asked her. Quelques Fleurs by Houbigant, she said. A feminine woman. A pretty woman whose hands, now bent and swollen are forever turning over and over, stroking and rubbing and seemingly searching the air for something, what? Another life now gone. We talk about the characters of 44 Scotland Street. It’s a lightness we can share.
