I was in the chemist’s and this happened.

I saw an old witch. I was staring at this old creature and thought, a witch. Here she was, beside me. A tiny bent-over woman, with a nose nearly meeting her chin, in black heavy dusty clothes, and something not far off a bonnet. She saw me looking at her and thrust at me a prescription and said, ‘What is this? You get it for me.’ Fierce blue eyes, under grey craggy brows, but there was something wonderfully sweet in them.

I liked her, for some reason, from that moment. I took the paper and knew I was taking much more than that. ‘I will,’ I said. ‘But why? Isn’t he being nice to you?’ Joking: and she at once responded, shaking her old head vigorously.

‘No, oh he’s no good, I never know what he’s saying.’

He was the young chemist, and he stood, hands on the counter, alert, smiling: he knew her well, I could see.

‘The prescription is for a sedative,’ I said.

She said, ‘I know that,’ and jabbed her fingers down on to the paper where I had spread it against my handbag. ‘But it’s not aspirin, is it?’

I said, ‘It’s something called Valium.’

‘That’s what I thought. It’s not a pain-killer, it’s a stupefier,’ she said.

He laughed. ‘But it’s not as bad as that,’ he said.

I said, ‘I’ve been taking it myself.’

She said, ‘I said to the doctor, aspirin–that’s what I asked for. But they’re no good either, doctors.’

All this fierce and trembling with a sort of gaiety. Standing there, the three of us, we were laughing, and yet she was so very angry.

‘Do you want me to sell you some aspirin, Mrs Fowler?’

‘Yes, yes. I’m not going to take this stuff that stupefies you.’

He handed her the aspirin, and took her money, which she counted out slowly, coin by coin, from the depths of a great rusty bag. Then he took the money for my things– nail varnish, blusher, eyeliner, eye-shadow, lipstick, lip-gloss, powder, mascara. The lot: I had run low on everything. She stood by watching, with a look I know now is so characteristic, a fierce pondering look that really wants to understand. Trying to grasp it all.

I adjusted my pace to hers and went out of the shop with her. On the pavement she did not look at me, but there was an appeal there. I walked beside her. It was hard to walk so slowly. Usually I fly along, but did not know it till then. She took one step, then paused, examined the pavement, then another step. I thought how I rushed along the pavements every day and had never seen Mrs Fowler, but she lived near me, and suddenly I looked up and down the streets and saw–old women. Old men too, but mostly old women. They walked slowly along. They stood in pairs or groups, talking. Or sat on the bench at the corner under the plane tree. I had not seen them. That was because I was afraid of being like them. I was afraid, walking along there beside her. It was the smell of her, a sweet, sour, dusty sort of smell. I saw the grime on her thin old neck, and on her hands.

The house had a broken parapet, broken and chipped steps. I went in with her, my heart quite sick, and my stomach sick too because of the smell. Which was, that day, of over-boiled fish. We walked along a dark passage to the ‘kitchen’. I have never seen anything like it. It was an extension of the passage, with an old gas-cooker, greasy and black, an old white china sink, cracked and yellow with grease, a cold-water tap wrapped around with old rags and dripping steadily. A rather nice old wood table that had crockery standing on it, all ‘washed’ but grimy. The walls stained and damp. The whole place smelled, it smelled awful…. She did not look at me while she set down bread, biscuits and cat food. The clean lively colours of the grocery packages and the tins in that awful place. She was ashamed, but wasn’t going to apologize. She said in an offhand but appealing way, ‘You go into my room, and find yourself a seat.’

The room I went into had in it an old black iron stove that was showing a gleam of flames. Two unbelievably ancient ragged armchairs. Another nice old wood table with newspaper spread over it. A divan heaped with clothes and bundles. And a yellow cat on the floor. It was all so dirty and dingy and grim and awful.

Mrs Fowler brought in an old brown teapot, and two rather pretty old china cups and saucers. It was the hardest thing I ever did, to drink out of the dirty cup. We did not speak much because I did not want to ask direct questions, and she was trembling with pride and dignity. She kept stroking the cat–‘My lovely, my pretty’–and she said without looking at me, ‘When I was young my father owned a shop, and later we had a house in St John’s Wood, and I know how things should be.’

And when I left she said, in her way of not looking at me, ‘I suppose I won’t be seeing you again?’

And I said, ‘Yes, if you’ll ask me.’ Then she did look at me, and there was a small smile, and I said, ‘I’ll come on Saturday afternoon for tea, if you like.’

‘Oh I would like, yes I would.’ And there was a moment between us of intimacy: that is the word. And yet she was so full of pride and did not want to ask, and she turned away from me and began petting the cat: Oh, my little pet, my little pretty.

When I got home that evening I was in a panic. I had committed myself. I was full of revulsion. The sour, dirty smell was in my clothes and hair. I bathed and washed my hair and did myself up and rang a friend and said, ‘Let’s go out to dinner.’ We had a good dinner and the whole time I sat looking around at the people in the restaurant, everyone well dressed and clean, and I thought, if she came into this restaurant … well, she couldn’t. Not even as a cleaner, or a washer-up.

On the Saturday I took her some roses and carnations, and a cake with real cream. I was pleased with myself, and this carried me over her reaction–she was pleased, but I had overdone it. There was no vase for the flowers. I put them in a white enamel jug. She put the cake on a big old cracked plate. She was being rather distant. We sat on either side of the iron stove, and the brown teapot was on it to warm, and the flames were too hot. She was wearing a silk blouse, black dots on white. Real silk. Everything is like this with her. A beautiful flowered Worcester teapot, but it is cracked. Her skirt is of good heavy wool, but it is stained and frayed. She did not want me to see in her ‘bedroom’, but I took a peep when she was in the ‘kitchen’. The furniture was part very good: bookcases, a chest of drawers, then a shoddy dressing table and a wardrobe like a varnished packing case. The bed had on it an old-fashioned quilt, plump, of chintz. She did not sleep in the bed, I realized, but on the divan next door, where we sat. Everywhere in the room were piles of rubbish, what looked like rags, bundles of newspapers, everything you can think of: this was what she did not want me to see.

She talked and I listened. I did not leave till nearly seven. I came home, and switched on the fire, and thought it was time I did some cleaning. I sat by myself and thought of Mrs Fowler, by herself, the flames showing in the open front of her grate. I opened a tin of soup, and I watched television.

Next Saturday I took her a little pot of African violets and another cake. Everything the same: the fire burning, the yellow cat, and her dirty white silk spotted blouse.

There was a reticence in her, and I thought it was because she had talked last Saturday for three hours, hardly stopping.

But it wasn’t that. It came out almost when I was leaving.

‘Are you a good neighbour?’ she said.

‘I hope perhaps I may become one,’ I said, laughing.

‘Why, have they put you on probation, then?’

I did not understand, and she saw I didn’t. It turns out that the Council employ women, usually elderly, who go into old people’s houses for a cup of tea, or to see if they are all right: they don’t do much, but keep an eye on them. They are called Good Neighbours and they are paid so little they can’t be doing it for the money.

On the third Saturday I took her some fruit, and saw it was the wrong thing. She said nothing, again, till later, when she remarked that her teeth made it impossible for her to eat fruit.

‘Can’t you eat grapes? Bananas?’

She said, with humour, that the pension did not run to grapes.

And she was off, on the subject of the pension, and what coal cost, and what food cost, and ‘that council woman who doesn’t know what she is talking about.’ I listened, again. I have not pieced it all together yet. I see that it will be a long time before my ignorance, my lack of experience, and her reticence, and her rages–for now I see how they simmer there, making her eyes light up with what you’d think, at first, must be gaiety or even a sense of comedy–a longtime before how she is, her nature, and how I am, my rawness, can make it possible for me to form a whole picture of her.

She went with me to the outside door when I left, and she was doing something I have seen on the stage or written in novels. She wore an old striped apron, because she had put it on to make the tea, and she stood pleating it with both hands, and letting it go smooth, then pleating it again.

‘Shall I drop in during the week?’ I asked.

‘If you have time,’ she said. And could not resist, ‘And it will make a bit extra for you.’ Yet she almost gasped as she said this: she did not want to say it, because she wanted to believe I was not an official, paid person, but just a human being who likes her.

But I went back to Mrs Fowler after work.

I had been thinking all day about my marvellous bathroom, my baths, my dependence on all that. I was thinking that what I spent on hot water in a month would change her life.

But when I went in, taking six milk stouts and some new glasses, and I cried out from the door, ‘Hello, I’m here, let me in, look what I’ve got!’ and I strode in down that awful passage while she stood to one side, her face was a spiteful little fist. She wanted to punish me, but I wasn’t going to let her. I went striding and slamming about, and poured out stout and showed her the glasses, and by the time I sat down, she did too, and she was lively and smiling.

‘Have you seen my new boots?’ I asked her, thrusting them forward. She bent to peer at them, her mouth trembling with laughter, with mischief.

‘Oh,’ she half whispered, ‘I do like the things you wear, I do think they are lovely.’

So we spent the evening, me showing her every stitch I had. I took off my sweater and stood still so she could walk round me, laughing. I had on my new camisole, crêpe de Chine. I pulled up my skirts so she could see the lace in it. I took off my boots so she could handle them.

She laughed and enjoyed herself.

She told me about clothes she had worn when she was young.

There was a dress that was a favourite, of grey poplin with pink flowers on it. She wore it to visit her auntie. It had been the dress of her father’s fancy-woman, and it was too big for her, but she took it in.

‘Before my poor mother died, nothing was too good for me, but then, I got the cast-offs. But this was so lovely, so lovely, and I did love myself in it.’

We talked about the dresses and knickers and petticoats and camisoles and slippers and boas and corsets of fifty, sixty, seventy years ago. Mrs Fowler is over ninety.

And she talked most about her father’s woman, who owned her own pub. When Mrs Fowler’s mother died…. ‘She was poisoned, dear! She poisoned her–oh yes, I know what you are thinking, I can see your face, but she poisoned her, just as she nearly did for me. She came to live in our house. That was in St John’s Wood. I was a skivvy for the whole house, I slaved day and night, and before they went to bed I’d take up some thin porridge with some whisky and cream stirred in. She would be on one side of the fire, in her fancy red-feathered bed jacket, and my father on the other side, in his silk dressing jacket. She’d say to me, Maudie, you feeling strong tonight? And she’d throw off all that feathered stuff and stand there in her corsets. They don’t make corsets like that now. She was a big handsome woman, full of flesh, and my father was sitting there in his armchair smiling and pulling at his whiskers. I had to loosen those corset strings. What a job! But it was better than hauling and tugging her into her corsets when she was dressing to go out. And they never said to me, Maudie, would you fancy a spoonful of porridge yourself? No, they ate and drank like kings, they wanted for nothing. If she felt like a crab or a sole or a lobster, he’d send out for it. But it was never Maudie, would you like a bit? But she got fatter and fatter and then it was: Do you want my old blue silk, Maudie? I wanted it right enough! One of her dresses’d make a dress and a blouse for me, and sometimes a scarf. But I never liked wearing her things, not really. I felt as if they had been stolen from my poor mother.’

I did not get home till late.

I went back to Maudie last night. I said to her, ‘Can I call you Maudie?’ But she didn’t like that. She hates familiarity, disrespect. So I slid away from it. When I left I said, ‘Then at least call me Janna, please.’ So now she will call me Janna, but it must be Mrs Fowler, showing respect.

I asked her to describe to me all those old clothes, for the magazine: I said we would pay for her expertise. But this was a mistake. She cried out, really shocked and hurt, ‘Oh no, how can you… I love thinking about those old days.’

And so that slid away too. How many mistakes I make, trying to do the right thing.

Nearly all my first impulses are quite wrong, like being ashamed of my bathroom, and of the mag.

I spent an hour last night describing my bathroom to her in the tiniest detail, while she sat smiling, delighted, asking questions. She is not envious. No. But sometimes there is a dark angry look, and I know I’ll hear more, obliquely, later.

She talked more about that house in St John’s Wood. I can see it! The heavy dark furniture, the comfort, the good food and the drink.

Her father owned a little house where ‘they’ wanted to put the Paddington railway line. Or something to do with it. And he got a fortune for it. Her father had had a corner shop in Bell Street, and sold hardware and kept free coal and bread for the poor people, and in the cold weather there was a cauldron of soup for the poor. ‘I used to love standing there, so proud of him, helping those poor people….’

And then came the good luck, and all at once, the big house and warmth and her father going out nearly every night, for he loved going where the toffs were, he went to supper and the theatre, and the music hall and there he met her, Maudie’s mother broke her heart, and was poisoned.

Maudie says that she had a lovely childhood, she couldn’t wish a better to anyone, not the Queen herself. She keeps talking of a swing in a garden under apple trees, and long uncut grass. ‘I used to sit and swing myself, for hours at a time, and swing, and swing, and I sang all the songs I knew, and then poor Mother came out and called to me, and I ran in to her and she gave me fruit cake and milk and kissed me, and I ran back to the swing. Or she would dress me and my sister Polly up and we went out into the street. We had a penny and we bought a leaf of chocolate each. And I used to lick it up crumb by crumb, and I hoped I wouldn’t run into anyone so I must share it. But my sister always ate hers all at once, and then nagged at me to get some of mine.’

‘How old were you, on the swing, Mrs Fowler?’

‘Oh, I must have been five, six….’

None of it adds up. There couldn’t, surely, have been a deep grassy garden behind the hardware shop in Bell Street? And in St John’s Wood she would have been too old for swings and playing by herself in the grasses while the birds sang? And when her father went off to his smart suppers and the theatre, when was that? I ask, but she doesn’t like to have a progression made, her mind has bright pictures in it that she has painted for herself and has been dwelling on for all those decades.

In what house was it her father came in and said to her mother, ‘You whey-faced slop, don’t you ever do anything but snivel?’ And hit her. But never did it again, because Maudie ran at him and beat him across the legs until he began to laugh and held her up in the air, and said to his wife, ‘If you had some of her fire, you’d be something,’ and went off to his fancy-woman. And then Maudie would be sent up by her mother with a jug to the pub, to stand in the middle of the public bar asking for draught Guinness. ‘Yes, I had to stand there for everyone to see, so that she would be ashamed. But she wasn’t ashamed, not she, she would have me over the bar counter and into her own little back room, which was so hot our faces were beef. That was before she poisoned my mother and began to hate me, out of remorse.’

All that I have written up to now was a recapitulation, summing-up. Now I am going to write day by day, if I can. Today was Saturday, I did my shopping, and went home to work for a couple of hours, and then dropped in to Mrs F. No answer when I knocked, and I went back up her old steps to the street and saw her creeping along, pushing her shopping basket. Saw her as I did the first day: an old crooked witch. Quite terrifying, nose and chin nearly meeting, heavy grey brows, straggly bits of white hair under the black splodge of hat. She was breathing heavily as she came up to me. She gave her impatient shake of the head when I said hello, and went down the steps without speaking to me. Opened the door, still without speaking, went in. I nearly walked away. But followed her, and without being asked took myself into the room where the fire was. She came in after a long time, perhaps half an hour, while I heard her potter about. Her old yellow cat came and sat near my feet. She brought in a tray with her brown teapot and biscuits, quite nice and smiling. And she pulled the dirty curtains over, and put on the light and put the coal on the fire. No coal left in the bucket. I took the bucket from her and went along the passage to the coal cellar. A dark that had no light in it. A smell of cat. I scraped coal into the bucket and took it back, and she held out her hand for the bucket without saying thank you.

Monday.

Dropped in after work, with some chocolates. She seemed stand-offish. Cross because I did not go in yesterday? She said she had not gone out because it was cold, and she felt bad. After I got home I wondered if she wanted me to go and shop for her. But after all, she got along before I blew into her life–crashed into it.

Tuesday.

I was asked today if I would go to Munich for the Clothes Fair. I was reluctant, though I enjoy these trips: realized it was because of Maudie Fowler. This struck me as crazy, and I said I’d go.

Went in to Maudie after work. The flames were busting out of the grate, and she was hot and angry. No, she didn’t feel well, and no, I wasn’t to trouble myself. She was so rude, but I went into the kitchen, which stank of sour food and cat food that had gone off, and saw she had very little there. I said I was going out to shop for her. I now recognize these moments when she is pleased that I will do this or that, but her pride is hurting. She lowers her sharp little chin, her lips tremble a little, and she stares in silence at the fire.

I did not ask what to get, but as I left she shouted after me about fish for the cat. I got a lot of things, put them on her kitchen table, boiled up some milk, took it to her.

‘You ought to be in bed,’ I said.

She said, ‘And the next thing, you’ll be fetching the doctor.’

‘Well, is that so terrible?’

‘He’ll send me away,’ she said.

‘Where to?’

‘Hospital, where else?’

I said to her, ‘You talk as if hospital is a sort of prison.’

She said, ‘I have my thoughts, and you keep yours.’

Meanwhile, I could see she was really ill. I had to fight with her, to help her to bed. I was looking around for a nightdress, but I understood at last she did not use one. She goes to bed in vest and drawers, with an old cardigan pinned at the throat by a nice garnet brooch.

She was suffering because I saw that her bed was not clean, and that her underclothes were soiled. The sweet stench was very strong: I know now it is urine.

I put her in, made her tea, but she said, ‘No, no, I’ll only be running.’

I looked around, found that a chair in the corner of the room was a commode and dragged it close to the bed.

‘Who’s going to empty it?’ she demanded, furious.

I went out of the kitchen to see what the lavatory was like: a little cement box, with a very old unlidded seat, and a metal chain that had broken and had string extending it. It was clean. But very cold. No wonder she has a cough. It is very cold at the moment. February–and I only feel how cold it really is when I think of her, Maudie, for everywhere I am is so well heated and protected. If she is going out to that lavatory from the hot fire….

I said to her, Til drop in on my way to work.’

I am sitting here, in bed, having bathed and washed every scrap of me, hair too, writing this and wondering how it is I am in this position with Maudie.

Wednesday.

Booked for Munich. Went in to Maudie after work. The doctor was there. Dr Thring. An old man, fidgety and impatient, standing by the door, away from the heat and smell of the place. He was confronting an angry, obstinate, tiny old woman, who stood in the middle of her floor as if she was in front of the firing squad, ‘I won’t go into hospital, I won’t, you can’t make me.’

‘Then I won’t come in to look after you, you can’t make me do that.’ He was shouting. When he saw me, he said, in a different voice, relieved, desperate, ‘Tell her, if you’re a friend, she should be in hospital.’

She was looking at me quite terrified.

‘Mrs Fowler,’ I said, ‘why don’t you want to go into hospital?’

She turned her back on us both, and picked up the poker, and jabbed the flames with it.

The doctor looked at me, scarlet with anger and the heat of the place, and then shrugged, ‘You ought to be in a Home,’ he said. ‘I keep telling you so.’

‘You can’t force me.’

He exclaimed angrily and went into the passage, summoning me to follow. ‘Tell her,’ he said.

‘I think she should be in hospital,’ I said, ‘but why should she be in a Home?’

He was quite at the end of his tether with exasperation and–I could see–tiredness. ‘Look at it all,’ he said. ‘Look at it. Well, I’ll ring up the Services.’ And off he went.

When I got back, she said, ‘I suppose you’ve been arranging with him.’

I told her exactly what I said, and while I was speaking she was coughing, mouth closed, chest heaving, eyes watering, and was thumping her chest with the heel of her fist. I could see that she didn’t want to listen to what I said.

Thursday.

I was coming straight home from the airport, because I was suddenly tired. But made the taxi put me off at Maudie Fowler’s. I stood there knocking and banging on the door. Freezing. Not a sound. I got into a panic–was she dead?–and noted, not without interest, that one of my reactions was relief. At last, an agitation of the curtains at the window of her ‘front room’, which she seems never to use. I waited. Nothing happened. I banged and banged, absolutely furious by them. I was ready to strangle her. Then the door opened inwards, sticking and scraping, and there she was, a tiny little bundle of black, with her white face sticking up out of it. And the smell. It is no good my telling myself I shouldn’t care about such details. I care terribly. The smell… awful, a sour, sweet-sharp reek. But I could see she was only just able to stand there.

There was nothing ‘charming’ about me, I was so angry

‘Why do you keep me out in the cold?’ I said, and went in, past her, making her move aside. She then went on ahead of me down the passage, a hand on a wall to steady her.

In the back room, a heap of dead cinders in the grate. There was an electric fire, though; one bar, and it was making noises which meant it was unsafe. The place was cold, dirty, smelly, and the cat came and wound itself around my legs miaowing. Maudie let herself slide into her chair and sat staring at the grate.

‘Well, why didn’t you let the nurse in?’ I shouted at her.

‘The nurse,’ she said bitterly. ‘What nurse?’

‘I know she came.’

‘Not till Monday. All the weekend I was here by myself, no one.’

I was about to scream at her, ‘Why didn’t you let her in when she came on Monday?’ but saw there was no point.

I was full of energy again–anger.

‘Maudie,’ I said, ‘you are the limit, the end, you make things worse for yourself. Well, I’ll put the kettle on.’

I did. I fetched coal. I found the commode full of urine, but no worse, thank goodness. Thank goodness was what I thought then, but I see one gets used to anything. I then went out into the street with a carrier bag. A grey sleety rain. There I was, in all my smart things from Munich, scrabbling about in the skip for bits of wood. Faces at the windows, watching me.

Inside, I scraped out the grate, clouds of dust flying about, and laid the fire. With a fire-lighter. Wood and coal. Soon it was burning.
I made tea for both of us, having scalded the filthy cups.

I must stop being so petty about it. Does it matter, dirty cups? Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes.

She had not moved, but sat looking at the flames.

‘The cat,’ she said.

‘I’ve given her some food.’

‘Then let her out for a bit.’

‘There’s sleet and rain.’

‘She won’t mind.’

I opened the back door. A wave of cold rain came straight in at me, and the fat yellow cat, who had been pressing to get to the door, miaowed and ran back again, to the coal cellar.

‘She’s gone to the coal cellar,’ I said.

‘Then I suppose I’ll have to put my hand in it,’ she said.

This made me so angry! I was seething with emotion. As usual, I wanted to hit her or shake her and, as usual, to put my arms around her.

But my mind luckily was in control, and I did everything I should, without, thank God, being ‘humorous’ or charming or gracious.

‘Have you been eating at all?’

No response.

I went out again to shop. Not a soul in the corner shop. The Indian sitting there at the cash desk looked grey and chilled, as well he might, poor soul.

I said I was buying food for Mrs Fowler, wanting to know if she had been in.

He said, ‘Oh, the old lady, I hope she is not ill?’

‘She is,’ I said.

Why doesn’t she go into a Home?’

‘She doesn’t want to.’

‘Hasn’t she a family?’

‘I think so, but they don’t care.’

‘It is a terrible thing,’ he said to me, meaning me to understand that his people would not neglect an old woman like this.

‘Yes, it is a terrible thing, and you are right,’ I said.

When I got back, again I thought of death. She sat there, eyes closed, and so still, I thought not breathing.

But then, her blue eyes were open and she was looking at the fire.

‘Drink your tea,’ I said. ‘And I’ll grill you a bit of fish. Can you eat it?’

‘Yes, I will.’

In the kitchen I tried to find anything that wasn’t greasy, and gave up. I put the fish on the grill, and opened the door briefly to get in some clean air. Sleet notwithstanding.

I took her the fish, and she sat herself up and ate it all, slowly, and her hands trembled, but she finished it and I saw she had been hungry.

I said, ‘I’ve been in Munich. To see all the clothes for the autumn. I’ve been seeing all the new styles.’

‘I’ve never been out of England.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you all about it when you are a bit better.’

To this she did not respond. But at last, just when I thought I would go, she remarked, ‘I’ve a need for some clean clothes.’

I did not know how to interpret this. I did see–I have become sensitive enough for that–at least that this was not at all a simple request.

She wanted me to buy her clothes?

I looked at her. She made herself look at me, and said, ‘Next door, you’ll find things.’

‘What?’

She gave a trembling, discouraged sort of shrug.

‘Vest. Knickers. Petticoat. Don’t you wear underclothes, that you are asking?’

Again, the automatic anger, as if a button had been pushed. I went next door into the room I knew she didn’t like me in.

The bed that has the good eiderdown, the wardrobe, the dressing table with little china trinkets, the good bookcases. But everywhere piles and heaps of–rubbish. I could not believe it. Newspapers dating back fifty years, crumbling away; awful scraps of material, stained and yellow, bits of lace, dirty handkerchiefs, shreds of ribbon–I’ve never seen anything like it. She had never thrown anything away, I think. In the drawers, disorder, and they were crammed with–but it would take pages to describe. Petticoats, camisoles, knickers, stays, vests, old dresses or bits of them, blouses… and nothing less than twenty years old, and some of them going back to World War One. The difference between clothes now and then: these were all ‘real’ materials, cottons, silks, woollens. Not a man-made fibre there. But everything torn, or stained, or dirty. I pulled out bundles of things, and every one I examined, first for interest, and then to see if there was anything wearable or clean. I found at last a wool vest, and long wool drawers, and a rather nice pink silk petticoat, and then a woollen dress, blue, and a cardigan. They were clean, or nearly. I worked away in there, shivering with cold, and thinking of how I had loved myself all these last days, how much I do love myself, for being in control, on top; and thought that the nearest I could get to poor Maudie’s helplessness was remembering what it had been like to be a child, hoping that you won’t wet your pants before you get to the lavatory.

I took the clothes into the other room, which was very hot now, the flames roaring up. I said to her, ‘Do you want me to help you change?’ The sideways, irritable movement of the head, which I knew now meant I was being stupid.

But I did not know why.

So I sat down opposite her, and said, ‘I’ll finish my tea before it’s freezing.’ I noted that I was drinking it without feeling sick: I have become used to drinking out of grimy cups, I noted that with interest. Once Maudie had been like me, perpetually washing herself, washing cups, plates, dusting, washing her hair.

She was talking, at random I thought, about when she had been in hospital. I half listened, wishing that doctors and nurses could hear how their hospitals are experienced by someone like Maudie. Prisons. Reformatories. But then I realized she was telling me about how, because she had not been well enough to be put in the bath, two nurses had washed her in her bed, and I understood.

‘I’ll put on the kettles,’ I said. ‘And you must tell me what to do.’

I put on two kettles, found an enamel basin, which I examined with interest, for I have not seen any but plastic ones for a long time, and searched for soap and a flannel. They were in a hole in the wall above the sink: a brick taken out and the cavity painted.

I took the basin, kettles, soap, flannel, a jug of cold water, next door. Maudie was struggling out of her top layer of clothes. I helped her, and realized I had not co-ordinated this at all. I rushed about, found newspapers, cleared the table, spread thick papers all over it, arranged basin, kettles, jug, washing things. No towel. I rushed into the kitchen, found a damp dirty towel, rushed into the front room and scrabbled about, seeming to myself to be taking all day. But it was really only a few moments. I was bothered about Maudie standing there, half naked, and ill, and coughing. At last I found a cleanish towel. She was standing by the basin, her top half nude. There is nothing of her. A fragile rib cage under creased yellow skin, her shoulder bones like a skeleton’s, and at the end of thin stick arms, strong working hands. Long thin breasts hanging down.

She was clumsily rubbing soap on to the flannel, which, needless to say, was slimy. I should have washed it out first. I ran next door again, tore a bit off an old clean towel and took it back. I knew she wanted to tick me off for tearing the towel; she would have done if she had not been saving her breath.

I slowly washed her top half, in plenty of soap and hot water, but the grime on her neck was thick, and to get that off would have meant rubbing at it, and it was too much. She was trembling with weakness. I was comparing this frail old body with my mother’s: but I had only caught glimpses of her sick body. She had washed herself. Now I washed Maudie Fowler. Maudie might be only skin and bones but her body doesn’t have that beaten-down look, as if the flesh is sinking into the bones. She was chilly, she was sick, she was weak–but I could feel the vitality beating there: life. How strong it is, life. I had never thought that before, never felt life in that way, as I did then; washing Maudie Fowler, a fierce angry old woman. Oh, how angry: it occurred to me that all her vitality is in her anger; I must not, must not resent it or want to hit back.

Then there was the problem of her lower half, and I was waiting for guidance.

I slipped the ‘clean’ vest on over her head, and wrapped the ‘clean’ cardigan round her, and then saw she was sliding down the thick bunches of skirt. And then it hit me, the stench. Oh, it is no good, I can’t not care. Because she had been too weak or too tired to move, she had shat her pants, shat everything.

Knickers, filthy…. Well, I am not going on, not even to let off steam, it makes me feel sick. But I was looking at the vest and petticoats she had taken off, and they were brown and yellow with shit. Anyway. She stood there, her bottom half naked. I slid newspapers under her, so she was standing on thick wads of them. I washed and washed her, all her lower half. She had her big hands down on the table for support. When it came to her bottom she thrust it out, as a child might, and I washed all of it, creases too. Then I threw away all that water, refilled the basin, quickly put the kettles on again. I washed her private parts, and thought about that phrase for the first time: she was suffering most terribly because this stranger was invading her privateness. And I did her legs again, again, since the dirt had run down them. And I made her stand in the basin and washed her yellow gnarled old feet. The water was hot again over the flaring gas, and I helped her pull on the ‘clean’ bloomers. By then, having seen what was possible, they were clean to me, just a bit dusty. And then the nice pink petticoat.

‘Your face,’ I said. For we had not done that. ‘How about your hair?’ The white wisps and strands lay over the yellow dirty scalp.

‘It will wait,’ she said.

So I washed her face, carefully, on a clean bit torn off the old towel.

Then I asked her to sit down, found some scissors, cut the toenails, which was just like cutting through horn, got clean stockings on, her dress, her jersey. And as she was about to put on the outside clothes of black again, I said involuntarily, ‘Oh, don’t–’ and was sorry, for she was hurt, she trembled even more, and sat silent, like a bad child. She was worn out.

I threw out the dirty water and scalded the basin, and filled a kettle to make fresh tea. I took a look out of the back: streams of sleet, with crumbs of greyish snow, the wind blowing hard–water was coming in under the kitchen door; and as for thinking of her going out into that to reach the lavatory, that freezing box–yet she had been going out, and presumably would again.

I kept saying to myself, She is over ninety and she has been living like this for years: she has survived it!

I took her more tea, and some biscuits, and left her by her big fire.

I put all the filthy outer clothes I had taken off in newspaper and folded them up and dumped them in the rubbish bin, without asking her.

And then I made a selection among the clothes from the drawers, and stripped the filthy sheets from her bed, and the pillowcases, and went out into the rain to the launderette, leaving them with the girl there to be done.

I made the place as neat as I could, put down food for the cat, who sat against Maudie’s leg, being stroked. I cleared everything up. All this t ime Maudie sat staring into the flames, not looking at me when I looked at her, but watching me as I moved around, and when she thought I didn’t know.

‘Don’t think I don’t appreciate it,’ she said as I laboured on, and on. I was sweeping the floor by then, with a hand brush and pan. I couldn’t find anything else. The way she said this, I couldn’t interpret it. It was flat I thought, even hopeless: she was feeling helpless in a new way. For, very clearly, no one had ever done this kind of thing for her before.

I went back to the launderette. The large competent Irish girl with whom I had exchanged the brisk comradeship of equals when leaving the stuff gave me the great bag of clean things and looked into my face and said, ‘Filth. I’ve never seen anything like it. Filth.’ She hated me.

I said, ‘Thanks,’ did not bother to explain, and left. But I was flaming with–embarrassment! Oh, how dependent I am on being admired, liked, appreciated.

I took the things back, through the sleet. I was cold and tired by then. I wanted to get home…. But I cleared out the drawers of a large chest, put the clean things in, and told Maudie where I had put them.

Then I said, ‘I’ll drop in tomorrow evening.’

I was curious to hear what she’d say.

‘I’ll see you then,’ was what she said.

And now I am alone, and have bathed, but it was a brisk businesslike bath, I didn’t soak for hours. I should have tidied everything, but I haven’t. I am, simply, tired. I cannot believe that this time yesterday I was in the hotel, pampered guest, eating supper with Karl, cherished colleague. Flowers, venison, wine, cream–the lot.

It seems to me impossible that there should be that there; and then Maudie Fowler, here. Or is it I who am impossible? I certainly am disoriented.

I have to think all this out. What am I to do? Who can I discuss it with?

Now we are nearly into summer.

What has happened since I sat down last to this unfortunate diary of mine? But I don’t want to give it up.

At the Indian shop, I hung around until the owner, Mr Patel, said, ‘Mrs Fowler was out on the street yesterday, screaming and shouting.’

‘Oh yes, what did she say?’

‘She was screaming. None of you were around trying to get me hot water and a bath when I had a baby, none of you cared when I didn’t have food to give him. I’ve lived all my life without running hot water and a bath, and if you come back I’ll get the police.’

Mr Patel says all this slowly, his grave concerned eyes on my face, and I didn’t dare smile. He keeps his eyes on my face, reproachful and grave, and says, ‘When I was in Kenya, before we had to leave, I thought everyone in this country was rich.’

‘You know better now, then.’

But he wants to say something else, something different. I wait, pick up some biscuits, put them back, consider a tin of cat food.

At last he says, in a low voice, ‘Once, with us, we would not let one of our old people come to such a life. But now–things are changing with us.’

I feel I personally should apologize. At last I say, ‘Mr Patel, there can’t be very many like Mrs Fowler left.’

‘I have six, seven, every day in my shop. All like her, with no one to care for them. And I am only one shop.’

He sounds as if he is accusing me. He is accusing my clothes, my style. I am out of place in this little corner shop. And then, feeling as if he has wronged me, he takes a cake from the shelves, one that Maudie likes, and says, ‘Give it to her.’

Our eyes meet again, and this time differently: we are appalled, we are frightened; it is all too much for us.

Photograph © Tom Wachtel