It’s all right.’ She pulled a tissue from the family-size box on the coffee table and carefully wiped the corner of my closed-up eye, my stretched mouth, even the thing that is on the side of my face. I had held the words only inside my head. I hadn’t heard your name spoken for twenty years. A warm tear slipped down the side of my nose. Then she placed my post in my lap, as if that were the end of it. Sister Lucy folded the letter carefully and tucked it back inside the envelope. Wait for him? I suppose he’s going to make a visit.’ ‘He says, Wait for me.’ She gave an optimistic shrug. ‘Well, that’s nice.
Oh, but there’s a PS too,’ said Sister Lucy. She went as slowly as she could, but there were a few words only. She unfolded the page, and her face seeped with pink. ‘Shall I read it out for you, Queenie?’ I tried to say no, but the no came out as a funny noise she mistook for a yes. She tucked her childlike finger under the flap and wiggled it along the fold to tear the envelope open. I just kept looking and looking and remembering. I heard the slapping of water against the plastic buoys and the clack of rigging against the masts. Straight away I could picture the muddy blue of the estuary, the little boats moored to the quay. I don’t hear from the man in twenty years, and then he sends a letter and gives me a heart attack. ‘And, Queenie, something for you.’ Sister Catherine crossed the room, holding out an envelope. The loud woman called Finty opened a letter informing her that if she scratched off the foil window, she would discover that she’d won an exciting prize.
The blind lady, Barbara, received a note from her neighbour - Sister Catherine read it out - spring is coming, it said. I don’t know her name.) There is a big man they call the Pearly King, and he had another parcel though I have been here a week and I haven’t yet seen him open one.
There was a card for the new young woman. Sister Catherine passed several brown envelopes, forwarded, to a Scotsman known as Mr Henderson. Sister Catherine strode in with the morning delivery.
I can imagine all sorts of things, Harold, if I put my mind to it. I hear the patients cough, and it is only the wind in my garden by the sea. But I close my eyes and I pretend that the heat of the radiator is the sun on my hands and the smell of lunch is salt in the air. The colours, the smells, the way a day passes. By the time she’d got sorted, pens and a glass of water and so on, he was dozing again. One lone seagull balanced in the sky.Ī patient nodded, and Sister Lucy fetched paper. Outside, the winter evergreens flapped and shivered. Sister Lucy, who is the youngest nun volunteering in the hospice, asked if anyone would like to help with her new jigsaw. We were in the dayroom for morning activities.
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