Letter to Sister Benedicta by Rose Tremain Page A

Leon yesterday to write about it, so I never told you, Sister, how it has increased my general confusion.
    I went prepared to talk to Leon about the Wainwright case, thinking, it’s time he wrote something else down and the mention of Richard Wainwright may jog his mind to make a pattern. But when I arrived at the nursing home, the receptionist popped quickly out of her booth and said:
    â€œI wonder if you’d mind waiting, Mrs Constad. There is a visitor with your husband and we only allow one visitor at a time. If you’d care to have a seat?”
    â€œWhat visitor?” I asked. “Who is the visitor?”
    â€œI’m afraid I don’t know, Mrs Constad. I wasn’t here when she came in. I was advised by Matron to ask you to wait – if you came today.”
    â€œWell, surely it wouldn’t matter if I went in? I wouldn’t disturb Leon.”
    â€œNursing home rules, Mrs Constad,” the receptionist said with a smile. “We don’t have many rules, but this is one.”
    She showed me to a leather chair in a room I’d never noticed before. It resembled a dentist’s waiting-room: blackish oil paintings hung on damask walls, a polished table piled up with copies of Vogue and Homes and Gardens . I fell into the leather chair and stared at the room. I felt unbalanced by the news of Leon’s visitor, rather shocked. I decided at first that the visitor was Sheila and searched myself for signs of anger. I found a little; I thought of the girl’s body, imagined Leon telling her each day how he wanted to love it for ever. But then the anger passed. Leon’s love for Sheila had diminished, died even, and I thought poor girl, when she sees him it will be a terrible shock, like seeing a dead person, and who knows if she won’t feel like throwing up in the washbasin.
    I got up and crossed to the polished table, deciding to pass the time with a glossy magazine and not think about Sheila. I sat down with Vogue , which is inevitably crammed with photographs of thin women and Scandinavian kitchens and very bad therapy if you are fifty and fat and the London dirt gets into every cranny of your rooms and the plants on the kitchen window-sill die one after the other and you never know why. Looking at all the pages of expensive clothes, I thought, how strange when Leon has let me be rich that I’ve never been smart. Leon would have liked a well-dressed person for a wife and has now and then complained about my utter lack of smartness. If Leon gets better, I heard myself think, I shall try to smarten up – and I shall get thin. But then the thought of going back to India slipped suddenly into my mind. I saw myself walking, walking through a crowded bazaar, wearing some kind of robe that was loose and comfortable in the heat and which wasn’t at all smart but made me forget my Western body crammed into its corset. I walked on, moving slowly with the crowd, a part of the crowd, going nowhere, only letting myself hear and see, full of wonder at the strangeness of the place and the people pressed in so tightly all around me, knowing that if I walked for long enough, I would be changed by what I saw and smelt and understood and my old ways would fall off me like scabs.
    I put down the magazine and closed my eyes. No sooner were they closed than the receptionist came into the room and announced to me that I could go and see Leon now if I wanted to.
    â€œWhat about the other visitor?” I asked.
    â€œShe’s just left, Mrs Constad.”
    â€œI didn’t see her go.”
    â€œNo? She was quite a young person, wearing a duffle coat.”
    This was confusing. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine Sheila wearing a duffle coat, not even in December on a dark afternoon.
    â€œAre you sure it was a duffle coat?” I persisted.
    â€œOh yes. Black, I think. Though I couldn’t say for certain. So many visitors come and go past me.”
    I walked slowly