Chapter 19
KATE
Yet die we must.
Kate and Linda are at Kate’s kitchen table, pens and watercolors out.
A scattering of experimental drawings in front of them.
Pictures of imaginary shop fronts—a florist and a bookshop—and kitchen dressers dotted with china.
This wasn’t Kate’s choice, and she had stuck to cherry Cornishware for her dresser.
Kate thinks Linda is doing well. Linda was amazed to find out about the vanishing point—that spot in your drawing where your eye would be looking—and how you can use this in one-dimensional perspective.
“I can’t believe no one told me that before! ”
Kate had replied, “It’s really easy. Once you have found that point, all lines run to it, so you will get your perspective angles right.”
However, Kate can see that Linda has a low boredom threshold and that she wants to move on quickly to the next thing before really finishing what she is working on.
Kate asked about her family and Linda is now telling Kate how she and Leonard met. He had come into the hospital with a friend who had fallen off a ladder. And that was that.
“How long have you been married?”
“Too long,” Linda laughs. “No, I’m joking. It’s just sometimes . . .”
Kate thinks back to showing her around the cottage earlier.
She had worried much less about the clutter but had apologized for the stuff left on the stairs.
“Oh, don’t you worry. I’m always leaving things on the stairs ready to take up, and Leonard is always having a go at me.
” Linda then muttered, “Sometimes I think, maybe I’ll leave the pile at the top of the stairs.
Then just one trip, one little push, and off you go, Leonard.
” She had laughed, but there was a certain weariness in her voice.
Kate doesn’t know what to say or ask in response to Linda’s unfinished “just sometimes.” In the end, she just murmurs, “Pasta bake.”
Linda laughs out loud. “That is it, that is just it. Why won’t men wear their bloody hearing aids?
The doctors have told him that if he doesn’t, his hearing is going to get worse.
The boys have tried. I have tried. But all he will say is they are uncomfortable and that he’s not an old man.
He’s nearly eighty, for God’s sake. We are old! ”
“It must be hard,” Kate sympathizes.
“Do you know what, Kate? It’s lonely. He doesn’t seem to realize he is living in his own little world.
And he talks at people, especially if we’re out and he can’t handle the background noise.
” Linda slowly flicks her paintbrush back and forth over the yellow paint.
“I know Leonard is . . . oh, maybe he’s not the most exciting man.
But he is a good man. And he’s my man. Now there are times when I think I am going to be spending the rest of my days with a boring, selfish old fart. ”
Linda looks up, and Kate sees tears in her eyes. Before she can say anything, Linda puts her paintbrush down and fixes Kate with her eyes. “There is something I need to tell you, Kate.”
She knows I’m JoJo Rose.
Is she ashamed, or would it be a relief?
“I knew your sister, Alice.”
Kate’s breath leaves her body in a rush. She had not been expecting this.
“I was a palliative care nurse for over thirty years. It was the best job I ever had.” She smiles a little sadly at Kate.
“I know in the last few weeks of her life, Alice was nursed in the hospice here. That she was moved from London. You and I never met because I was working nights at that time. But I recognized you, well, from Alice. I know you don’t look alike, and have different surnames, but there is something in your expressions. ”
Kate’s hand flies to her mouth, and tears start in her eyes. Everyone has always commented on their differences. To have someone tell her she was like her sister in any small way is like being given the most precious gift. She shakes her head and cannot speak as the tears fall.
Linda reaches out and takes her other hand, patting it.
“I don’t normally say anything when I meet people I have nursed—the lucky ones.
Or the families of those who have died. So many people want to forget that time.
And they don’t want to be reminded of it when they bump into a nurse in Waitrose. But Alice, well, she was special.”
Kate grips Linda’s hand tight and forces the words out. “I miss her so much. She was a bit older than me, but she was so . . .” She cannot finish.
“Kate, it was so easy to see, even at that stage, what a wonderful woman she was. She was bright, luminous.”
Dragonfly bright.
“She was one of the last people I nursed before I retired, and I will never forget her. We did laugh, Kate, I mean really laugh. She talked about her nieces. I presume your daughters?”
Kate nods.
“They clearly meant the world to her, and that did make her sad, the thought of not seeing them grow older. But she did tell me, Kate, that they had the best mom. I think she had seen what you had done for them . . .”
Kate goes to interrupt, but Linda holds up her hand, smiling.
“She said that you didn’t see it yourself.
Just got on with things.” Linda frowns, “I think there was a time she felt she had let you down, Kate. She didn’t tell me what it was.
But I hope that, in a small way, I reassured her.
Oh, it was so easy to see this was a woman who had brought a lot of love into people’s lives. And laughter.”
Kate nods, and looking at Linda, she realizes Linda is crying too.
This means so much to her. That her sister, years on, could have made an impression on this woman, who will have seen so much.
However, the thought that Alice was worrying about the time when their dad died hits her hard.
They had talked about a lot toward the end, she thought she had reassured Alice—but maybe not.
Somehow, she is sure Linda will have said the right thing. This does help her.
For the first time, it strikes her that maybe her lingering sense of Alice letting her down has nothing to do with that time with their dad.
It is simply that the loss of her is so great that she feels bereft without her.
Alice had left her. Now, with Linda beside her, something eases.
She wishes she could tell Linda how she feels, but she cannot speak through all the tears.
“And how are you, Kate?” Linda asks, looking down at Kate’s hand in hers, knuckles gnarled as a side effect of the drugs she has been taking to suppress the estrogen in her body.
A way to combat the possible return of cancer.
“Look, don’t answer that yet. I’m going to get you a tissue, and if you don’t mind me rummaging in your kitchen, I’m going to make us some more tea. ”
Kate nods at the woman standing beside her. She is so grateful that this wonderful woman nursed her sister. Knowing she made Alice laugh is a solace that reaches into her heart, and Kate leans back and lets the tears fall.
Ten minutes later, they are sitting on Kate’s sofa with their feet up on the large wooden chest in front of them, nursing mugs of tea in their laps.
Kate feels shaky, like she is recovering from an illness.
She has explained to Linda that her prognosis is good.
Linda had asked detailed medical questions, which Kate was able to answer to her satisfaction.
There is one more thing she wants to say to Linda.
Well, probably two. But she doesn’t know if she can voice the second one.
The first will do. Both are about guilt.
“I think about how unfair it all was. Sometimes, if I say that, people think I am talking about me getting cancer. But that’s not it.
I mean, why shouldn’t I get cancer? So many people do.
” Kate shrugs. “The thing I am struggling with the most is that I have survived cancer, and Alice didn’t.
That seems so unfair. If she had died of anything but cancer, I think I would be able to cope better. But . . .”
“You keep thinking why Alice and why not me?” Linda finishes.
“Yes, exactly.”
“That is a hard one. Maybe you already know that—”
“—there is no answer.” This time Kate finishes.
Linda takes a sip of tea. “No, that wasn’t what I was going to say.”
Kate studies her.
“I was actually going to say that that isn’t a question.
Well, not one that makes sense. Knowing what I know about illness and death.
It’s like asking . . . I don’t know . . .
why isn’t the sun the moon? It just isn’t, that’s all.
Having nursed the dying for over thirty years, I honestly believe there is no reason why Alice died, and you lived. That is just the way it was.”
Linda sighs, “I don’t know if that is any help at all.
Working with death does make you less frightened of it, and yet you also realize the inevitability of it.
It was probably Shakespeare who said, Die we must. He certainly said most things.
” She continues, “Kate, there is no point in trying to make sense out of why Alice, and why not me. It’s a question that honestly has no place in reality. ”
Maybe she should listen to this woman who has seen so much of death.
“The very little I knew of Alice, I would say, she would want you to be making the most of your life. Asking the right questions.”
“Which are?” Kate gives a watery smile.
“Well, one to start with is why Bardy is making such a fool of himself over Pia when it is quite clear the woman likes you.”
Kate chokes on a laugh, and Linda joins in.
Does Linda know that I like him? She is not ready to ask, so she just enjoys laughing with the woman who has been dreaming of pushing her husband down the stairs.
As they sit companionably on the sofa, feet up, sipping tea, Kate wonders if they are both thinking of another woman who liked to laugh: Alice Rose. Her dragonfly-bright sister.
Kate leans in closer to Linda.
“If you ever need someone to sit on Leonard and hold him down while you put his hearing aids in, you know you only have to ask.”
And you never know, she might be helping to save Leonard’s life.