Free Age by Hortense Calisher Page A

coughed.
    ‘Okay, ladies.’ Gertrude’s voice was fainter. I had to admire it for still staying so American. ‘They want me to remember I’m dying. In the hospice they like us to say that, at least once a day. Even though—they can tell.’ Her skin did seem grayer than when we entered. Her hair, surely coiffed that morning, hung like rope. Sister Bond leaned forward to wipe her mouth for her.
    ‘I was a baby philanthropist without money,’ Gertrude said then. ‘Or just a smart baby—at least in New York. Where they call you “on the make”—if you make them pay for it. The British welfare state and I took to each other right away. Hobbies can be indulged without guilt. If they’re for the common good. And I got quite bright at thinking those up. You only have to look around you.’ She put out a hand, blindly.
    Nurse Bond gave her a kind of inhaler on which she breathed twice.
    Nurse McClellan said, ‘There.’
    When Gertrude was again able she said to my wife, ‘How honest are you two? With each other.’
    ‘About—living—do you mean?’ Gemma said.
    ‘Pretty damn good, I’d say,’ I said.
    ‘Hush, Rupert,’ Gertrude said faintly. She used to say ‘Shut up.’ Then she reached out again—‘Bond’—and Nurse Bond gave her the apparatus again, while Nurse McClellan breathed: ‘I’m here.’ In unison they chanted to four, then took the inhaler away.
    ‘Mar-vel-lous —’ Gertrude whispered to them. ‘Marvelous. Stand by.’ She sat up straighter, taking it slow. I saw the beat in her breast. To see that in a breast one remembers—is a payment. ‘No, friends,’ she said. ‘Honest about dying.’
    Gemma waited for me to answer, maybe too long. Was she also—hesitant? ‘It’s not as easy for two—as it is for one.’
    When she raised her head our eyes met. Gemma, I wanted to whisper, I didn’t know it was the same for you.
    That we should have had to come here to admit this, I thought. Even if neither of us said it aloud. Turning, I saw that the Sisters were nodding to Gertrude. Who nodded back.
    ‘My first hospice death—’ she said. She stopped and took breath. ‘My friend Ivan. I visited him there. An older man. Quite alone … actually. Gay. Kept the ward in a giggle. “Get drunk on death,” he’d tell them, “in the company of friends.” I asked what I could bring them all … It was he who advised the caviar.’
    ‘Some prefer black pudding,’ said one of the two at the window.
    ‘Takes all kinds,’ the other said.
    I could no longer distinguish which Sister spoke.
    Gertrude’s voice was clear. ‘“The classless society, old dear … quite restful at the end” … Ivan said.’
    ‘Of course, some are beyond asking—’ came from the window.
    ‘—But not you, Mrs Acker.’
    Gertrude sat up. Or tried to. The Sisters came to her on the instant, pedaling there softly, in the way good nurses fly. They lifted her up, one on either side.
    ‘I held his hand at the end,’ Gertrude said. ‘I was … his family.’
    Both Sisters were now wiping the pink foam from Gertrude’s lips. They had an easy-handed system. While McClellan held her, Bond wiped. Then they shifted. One felt how often they must have practiced it.
    When her eyes rolled up in her head they held her higher.
    ‘She’s fainted,’ I heard myself breathe.
    ‘Champagne now,’ one Sister said softly.
    The other, reaching to a low shelf on a table behind her, brought out a bottle the waiter must have left with us, drew its cork, poured, and brought the glass to Gertrude’s lips.
    ‘Champagne, dear. You asked for it.’
    ‘And there’s enough, dear, for the family.’
    Then—with the slightest headshake between them, Gertrude’s glass was put down. Then Gertrude herself was lowered flat.
    ‘Why, she’s dying—’ I must have said aloud.
    Beside me, Gemma said: ‘She’s dead.’
    There was a rattling sound from the wheelchair.
    Once more the Sisters lifted Gertrude’s body up, this time