Fay Weldon - Novel 23 by Rhode Island Blues (v1.1) Page B

lay there. Dr Bronstein told her that he was eighty- nine:
that until his enforced retirement he had been a biochemist, and, he was happy
to admit to Felicity, had been a conspiracy theorist all his life. He was in
good health, though he believed his two new titanium knees and one plastic and
one steel hip (implanted of necessity over four decades of medical care - he
had played baseball for his college team, and squash thereafter, and there is
nothing like sport for damaging the joints, but who in the vigour of their
youth is ever prepared to believe it) set up some kind of electrical discharge
which interfered with his mental processes. He kept up an animated flow if not
exactly conversation - he was too deaf for that - but at any rate talk.
                 That
night when Nurse Dawn came by to turn off Felicity’s light - Felicity had
told her not to bother, she could turn off her own light perfectly well, but
Nurse Dawn had seemed hurt so she’d consented - Nurse Dawn said: ‘A friendly
warning. Don’t take too much notice of our Dr Bronstein. He has a problem with
authority. Give him a chance and he’ll feel free to buttonhole you for the rest
of your life.’
                 Which
Felicity realized with a shock might well be spent as a Golden Bowler. She
refrained after all from asking Nurse Dawn if she could have Fat Free Choco
Lite for her good-night drink, and decided to go along with whatever Nurse Dawn
thought was best. As with the matter of the family photograph, it was of minor
importance: she would save her energies for some greater battle which she had
no doubt would soon enough come along. In the meantime she would lull Nurse
Dawn into complacency. But wasn’t this how one behaved with husbands? Putting
off confrontation until a right time which never came? In the end, if only by
default, you ended up living their life, not jours. But why not, here at the
Golden Bowl?
                 The
good-night drink provided by Nurse Dawn turned out to be semi-skimmed
unpasteurized milk with a little acacia honey stirred into it, for, Nurse Dawn
said, sweet dreams. As soon as the woman was gone Felicity got out of bed and
poured the sickly stuff down the bathroom sink, keeping her eyes averted from
the gilt-framed mirror.
     
                 * * *
     
                On the day she had first moved in
she’d thought she’d glimpsed the face of an elderly man looking out at her from
the glass. The image had been brief but vivid. She’d told herself that she was
overtired but hadn’t quite convinced herself. Vision it had been. Well, these
things happened from time to time in one’s life and were overlooked in the name
of sanity. She could only hope the vision was not prophetic: that she was
looking at herself in ten years’ time. It was sadly true that as one got older
the distinction between a male face and a female one lessened, but hardly to so
whiskery and rheumy a degree as this. Surely there would never come a time when
she, Felicity, would cease to tweeze the hairs from her nose and chin? Or
perhaps some kind of ghost looked back at her? Felicity had once owned a cat
who continued to haunt the house for a few weeks after its death at the age of
ten, under a car: just a flick of a tail out of the corner of the eye: the
sound of purring where no purring should be, the feel of fur rubbing up
affectionately against her shin: these things happened. She knew well enough
that the Atlantic Suite had fallen vacant upon the death of the previous
occupant: why else the new bed, the frantic redecoration? If the one she
replaced now appeared to her, was it in welcome or in warning?
                 The
apparition had appeared only briefly: she had looked away at once, in shock,
and forcing herself to look again, had seen only herself. That of course was
bad enough. You looked into a mirror as a young woman and your reflection
looked out at you as one who was old. So