Next Of Kin

By

Elizabeth Ashworth

“He’s going to be fine,” said Janet reassuringly as she came out of the nurse’s office with a smile of relief on her face.

“But what did the doctor say?”  I asked, angry and frustrated by the petty ruling that had forbidden the doctor to speak to me personally about John’s collapse.

“He said that Dad has had a mild heart attack, but they’ll be giving him some treatment and he should be home within the week.”

I glanced back up the corridor to where John was lying on the hospital bed – his face almost as white as the stiff sheets, his hand resting on the mustard yellow bedspread with his finger clamped into a device that played out his heart rate across a small monitor, reminding me of one of the grandchildren’s computer games as it beeped and dipped across the screen.

“Shall we go back in?”

Janet shook her head and slipped her arm through mine.  “He’s resting.  I think they’ve given him a sedative.  Anyway you look exhausted,” she added, genuine concern in her saddened voice.  “Come home with me and have something to eat.  Come back tomorrow, when you’re both feeling better.”

I nodded.  Now that I thought about it I was tired out – and surprisingly hungry as well, until I realised that I hadn’t eaten all day.

I’d just filled the kettle to make an early morning cup of tea when I’d heard the thump on the floor of the bathroom directly above.

“John?”  I’d called and getting no response.  “John?” louder and increasingly worried as I hurried up the stairs as best I could with my arthritic knees and found him grey faced and rubbing his left arm as he slumped against the side of the bath. “John what on earth’s wrong?”  I asked unnecessarily.  “I’d better call the doctor.”

So we’d spent most of the day in Accident and Emergency.  John on a trolley, wired up to various machines and me on a hard chair, feeling helpless.

“Are you Mrs Cotton?” the nurse had asked.

“Well…”  I began, staring down at my ringless fingers, unsure of what to say.  Even after twenty years I still hadn’t found an easy, unembarrassing way to explain to strangers that even though John and I lived together as husband and wife, we weren’t actually married.  “I’m…I’m John’s partner,” I explained using the currently acceptable term for people who co-habited.  The nurse almost kept her face expressionless but I didn’t miss the slight twitch of surprise that flickered across her eyebrows.  Older people like us were not supposed to be so unconventional.

I was married once, I wanted to explain, and so was John.  You see I was a widow and he was a widower.  My husband died with debts.  John on the other hand was fairly well off and I was thrilled that he even wanted to be my friend, never mind wanted me to move in with him.  But it was difficult, you see.  He had a daughter and she found it hard to accept me at first.  She was only young, just turned twenty-one and she didn’t like to think that her father could replace her mother so easily.  But she was a nice girl, really, and I didn’t want her to think I was a gold digger, only interested in John for his money.  So when John asked me to marry him I refused.  No, I said, not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t want to alienate Janet.  So he’d agreed reluctantly that the time wasn’t right and we’d decided that we could always get married later.  But somehow the years passed – and we were happy and comfortable and there didn’t seem any need for marriage.  In fact most friends and acquaintances presumed that we were married and I was known as Mrs Cotton and it was only in situations like these when I had to fill in an official form that it became awkward.

“So who is his next of kin?” asked the nurse, kindly.

“His daughter Janet.”

“Have you contacted her?”

“She’s on her way.” 

“Good,” said the nurse.

John was feeling better when Janet arrived.  The painkillers and the oxygen had restored his face to a healthier colour and he was breathing more easily.

“I’m sorry to be such a nuisance, sweetheart,” he said as she leant over and kissed his damp forehead.

“You’re never a nuisance,” she reassured him, hugging him as best she could through the tangle of wires.  “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay,” he reassured her.

“And are you all right, Margaret?” she asked, turning to me.  “You’ve had a rough morning.  Shall I try to find you a cup of tea?”

I nodded gratefully.  So glad that she’d come.  So glad to see her familiar face.  So glad that there was someone to take charge and look after us.

Now Janet drove nose to tail through the thronging tea-time traffic and onto the new estate, to the imposing detached house where they lived.  Mike was in their huge dining kitchen peeling potatoes; the grandchildren were round the table, busy with their homework, unusually quiet.

“Is Grandpa going to be all right?” asked Ellie, the youngest.

“Of course.  He’s just fine.  He’ll be home again soon,” she said, hugging her small daughter who looked so much like John.  “Come and sit down Margaret, dinner will be ready soon.”

She took my coat and ushered me into the sitting room like a guest, turning on the lamps, lighting the gas fire, asking if there was anything I needed.

“I’m fine,” I lied.  She hurried off upstairs to get changed and I sat alone and reflected on the day.  I couldn’t get the image of John with his lips parted and blue, struggling for breath and his eyes closed tightly against the pain, out of my mind.  Neither could I rid myself of the nagging selfish thought that had no place in my head on a day like this.  But it just wouldn’t be dismissed.  What would happen to me if John died?  I had no idea if he’d made a will.  I didn’t know if he’d made any provision for me.  All I did know was that if there was no will I would have no right to stay in our home, or receive any money to live on – even though I’d cooked and cleaned and cared for him all these years.

Tears welled at the corners of my tired eyes as scenes from my marriage to Keith returned to taunt me.  I remembered the police calling at the house after the accident.  I remembered the funeral.  I remembered the concerned phone call to say that the cheque I wrote to pay for it had been refused.  I remembered my puzzled call to the local branch of the bank and the girl who asked me to call in to speak to the manager.  I remembered my astonishment, disbelief and final outrage that there were debts – the bills, the creditors, the repossession of my home, my anger that the man I’d trusted could have done this to me.

I remembered how I’d got a job in a local jeweller’s shop.  How I’d rented a small bedsit and tried to keep myself solvent.  I remembered John coming to buy a gift for his daughter’s twenty first birthday and asking for my advice, and how he’d sent flowers and an invitation to dinner to the shop the next day to say thankyou.

“Are you all right, Margaret?” asked Mike, opening the door to the kitchen and allowing the delicious aroma of grilling lamb chops to come wafting through.  “It’s about ready?  You don’t mind eating in the kitchen do you?”

“Of course not.  Don’t be silly,” I said, hastily blowing my nose on a tissue.  Mike smiled sympathetically.  I felt guilty because he thought I’d been crying over John when I’d actually been crying for myself.

“Will you stay the night?” asked Janet.

“No.  no.”  I shook my head emphatically.  “I’ll sleep better in my own bed.”  Whilst it was my own bed, I thought.  So Mike drove me home.  He unlocked the front door with my key, turned on the lights and checked the rooms, closing the curtains and asking me if I’d be okay a dozen times before I eventually persuaded him to leave.

But I couldn’t sleep.  I drank tea and wandered the house in my dressing-gown, stroking the furniture and studying the paintings and ornaments that John and I had chosen together.  I strayed into John’s small office near the front door.  I usually only went in there to take him a cup of tea when he was busy at his desk, with his papers.

I pulled down the blind before turning on the table lamp, glancing over my shoulder, as if someone was going to discover me.  I opened a few drawers and glanced inside.  I tried the bureau but it was locked.  There was nothing there to reveal any secrets or ease my pain.  Eventually, ashamed, I came out and closed the door softly.  I went to bed and slept fitfully, dreaming, images of John on the bathroom floor transforming into images of myself in pyjamas, begging on the street.

Visiting time was two ’til eight and Janet came for me at half past one.  “Did you sleep?” she asked as we drove in bright sunshine to the hospital.

“On and off,” I said.

She took me up to the ward in the lift.  I was grateful.  I was terrified of them and if I’d been alone I would probably have struggled up all the flights of stairs and my knees would have throbbed and ached for the rest of the day.

John was sitting up in bed.  His eyes gleamed and crinkled as he smiled his pleasure at seeing us.  Janet stood back and allowed me to kiss him first.

“How are you?” we asked.  He dismissed our concerns with a wave of his hand.

“You don’t get rid of me that easily,” he joked.  “I’ll tell you what though, I could do with a Financial Times.  The newsagent chap who came round didn’t have one – though I probably shouldn’t be surprised.  Janet, be a sweetheart and see if you can get one from somewhere.”  She looked doubtful.

“I don’t think there’s anywhere around here…”

“Please?”  She smiled and stood up. 

“I’ll try,” she said.

“Margaret.”  He turned to me and took my hand in his as soon as she’d gone.  His hand still felt cold and I gently tried to rub some warmth into it.  “That was a close call,” he said.

“No…”  I began, but he held up his other hand to silence me.

“Hear me out.  There’s something I need to say before Janet comes back.  It was a close call.  And I’ve been lying here awake all night thinking…realising that we might not have as much time left as we thought.  Margaret, do you remember soon after we first met, I asked you something and you refused me.  You said the time wasn’t right – and it probably wasn’t.  But it’s different now – I think the right time has come.”

I’d been watching our hands, both older and frailer now, blue veined through paper thin skin and mis-shapen joints, but still intertwined.  I looked up and met the blue eyes that had entranced and rescued me twenty years ago.  They were about to do the same again because I realised with enormous relief what he was going to ask.

“Margaret, I’m sorry I can’t get down on one knee this time, but believe me the thought’s there.  Margaret, will you marry me?”

Slowly I raised his hand to my lips and kissed it gently.

“Yes,” I said.  “I’ll marry you.”  And the output on the heart monitor began to race so much that the nurse came briskly down from her office.

“Now what’s caused all this excitement?” she asked.

Underneath The Spreading Chestnut Tree

Elizabeth Ashworth

“They say you shouldn’t try to turn back time,” Sally said to Ian as they began to drive past the old familiar landmarks.

“But getting this new job is moving forwards,” said Ian. “It means we can afford a house of our own. It means we can start a family,” he paused and glanced at the grim face of his wife, “if you want to.”

“But we worked so hard to get away,” said Sally. “I don’t want to come back to Chadsworth.”

“But it’s changed,” he argued. “It isn’t the same.”

Sally agreed. The new motorway cut a gash through the moorland where she’d spent her childhood. The business park where Ian had been offered a job in computer development disfigured the valley where she’d only known allotments and smallholdings and as they negotiated the incomprehensible one-way system out of the town centre, she saw that the grocers and the butchers had turned into a Chinese takeaway and a tanning studio.

‘Welcome to Preston Brook’ said the sign as they turned onto the new housing estate around an impossibly small mini-roundabout. Sally saw that the crumbling stile that had led to the river bank had gone and in its place was a row of fluttering flags with builders’ names. Ian manoeuvred the car between a huge yellow JCB and a mound of topsoil to a small gravelled area in front of a ‘marketing suite’ which would eventually serve as a double garage.

Sally eased her stiff body out of the seatbelt and as she got out of the car she fastened her jacket against the familiar chill of the damp northern air. She wondered why she’d agreed to come all this way to see a house that she had no intention of moving into.

The smiling sales lady in a bottle green suit greeted Ian by name.

“And you’re Sally,” she beamed. “Would you like to look at the show home first? It’s exactly the same layout as yours, so you’ll be able to see what it’ll be like when it’s all finished off and decorated.”

She turned back to answer a ringing phone and Ian and Sally made their way unaccompanied to the ‘Pendle’ show home.

“Do we have to wear these?” asked Sally, holding up one of the blue plastic elasticated covers from a bin by the door.

“She’ll know by the mud on the rugs if we don’t.”

So they sat side by side on the bottom step of the stairs and struggled the covers over their outside shoes.

“Do you remember when we used to walk down here?” asked Ian.

“Of course I remember. It was always muddy.”

“You used to wash your shoes in the river and then you’d dangle your feet in the water.”

“And you stole my shoes and ran off and then I stood in a cow pat.” She shuddered at the memory of the unspeakable squelch as her bare foot had sunk into it. She remembered how angry she’d been with him. Perhaps it was a warning sign, but she’d believed then that she was in love with him. Now she wasn’t sure. They seemed to argue all the time they were together these days, trapped in the tiny basement flat with its exorbitant rent and gloomy rooms. She sometimes wondered if they wouldn’t be happier apart.

“And do you remember the horse chestnut tree?”

“It was a great place for conkers,” she said, remembering how, when she was small, her father had taken her there every autumn to search in the long grass, and how exciting and almost magical it had been to find a spiky green nest that everyone else had missed, with just a glimpse of shiny red brown conker peeping out. She would carefully peel away the covering, like unwrapping a precious gift and polish the nut between her hands, weighing it in her palm like treasure. She would never let her father drill into it to attach a string. She didn’t want anything to spoil her perfect discovery.

She’d felt a bit like that about Ian years ago. He’d been a bit prickly too at first, shy and unsure about girls, but with tender attention that layer had been peeled away and underneath she’d thought she’d found a more lasting treasure. Now she wondered if he was really as hard hearted as the chestnuts. The shine of the early days of their marriage had dulled lately and now he’d delivered this ultimatum. He’d accepted the job offer. He’d seen a house and paid a deposit without even asking her. He was moving whether she came with him or not.

“I was thinking about the day it rained,” he said, still talking about the tree.

“Oh,” she said, “you mean the day you asked me to marry you?”

“We were happy then,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied, thinking back to how they’d sheltered under the huge branches and how he’d pressed her so hard against the trunk that the bark hurt her back and how she hadn’t cared because his lips were soft on hers and she’d just agreed to be his wife. It seemed a long time ago. So much had changed.

“I know you don’t want to come back,” he said, “but this job offer is so right for me and if we’re going to try to make this marriage work, I don’t know a better place to do it. Come and look at the house,” he said, “and maybe I can change your mind.”

The house was very modern, with wooden floors, pale furniture, huge tasselled sofas and fussy curtains. It smelt of air fresheners and new paint. They wandered in silence from room to room. Sally ran her hand over the beech kitchen worktop and looked inside the double built-in oven. For a moment she was tempted.

“It’s huge,” she said, thinking of their compact London flat. “Can we really afford it?”

“The mortgage payments are less than the rent we’re paying now.”

“It’s nice,” she said, “but I still don’t know.”

They slithered upstairs in the plastic footwear and toured the bedrooms. In the last one, decorated as a child’s nursery, Sally looked out of the window and saw the horse chestnut in the distance. The stately white candles were just starting to fade into the small green buds that would later produce yet another crop of huge glossy conkers to delight the local children.

“Not everything’s changed,” said Ian as he put an arm around her shoulders, and for the first time in quite a while she didn’t flinch away from him. It was as if seeing the tree again reminded her of how she’d once felt. “I still love you Sally. I don’t want us to split up. Please come back with me.”

Sally sighed. The sight of the tree by the river did re-kindle so many happy memories of those long ago summer days when she and Ian had walked for miles through the countryside talking about their plans for the future. They would work hard, get good jobs, buy a big house in the country, raise a family, maybe get a dog. It had seemed then that it would be so easy. But the reality had been very different. They were both working long and hard, and although they enjoyed their jobs, there didn’t seem to be the time or money to pursue the dreams they’d planned. They were tired and irritable and argumentative with one another and Sally knew that their marriage was on the verge of failing. It was just that she was reluctant to give up her work for him. If it had been the other way around, if she’d been offered a good job in Chadsworth, would he have given up his career to move north with her, she wondered.

“Come and see the house we’re buying,” said Ian. She turned away from the window and saw his eager face. For a moment she was irritated again. He’d had no right to pay out a deposit on a house without asking her first.

“But it was perfect. I couldn’t risk losing it,” he’d explained.

They picked their way over the freshly turned earth to plot 77. Ian unlocked the door and Sally went in first to the empty shell. The dark asphalt floor was covered in boot marks. There was a network of pipes where the downstairs cloakroom was destined to be and the kitchen was in cardboard boxes leaning against the wall. It was far less appealing than the show home and Sally wondered what Ian had thought was so special about this one.

“Come and look,” he said leading her into the dining room. Beyond the patio doors at the bottom of a long garden was the horse chestnut tree. “Now do you see why it had to be this house?” he asked.

Ian unlocked the patio doors and slid them open. He led her out onto the muddy rectangle that would soon be transformed into a lawn. Not caring now about oozing mud or ruined shoes she allowed him to take her hand and guide her to the tree.

Then he slipped his arms around her and pushed her back against the tree trunk and kissed her firmly.

“Sally, will you come and live with me?” he asked. And over the sound of the raindrops plopping onto the broad green leaves that sheltered them, she heard herself say yes.