Letter to Sister Benedicta by Rose Tremain Page B

to Leon’s room. I was aware that I had begun to wonder if the visitor hadn’t been Alexandra. I had written to her twice, telling her that Leon’s chances of recovery were good, but never asking her to come and see him, afraid that if he saw her, the great anger he had felt with her and with Noel would come rumbling up from inside him again and burst out of him in appalling incoherent noises. It had seemed to me better that Alexandra and Noel stayed away. In time, if he recovered, Leon might find that all his anger had gone and that he could think of them again just as he’d thought of them for more than twenty years – with pride and with love – and one day, he’d get down the photograph albums and chuckle with pleasure over the trudges up Snowdon in the mist and the picnics in France.
    The thought that Alexandra was in London was a cruel one. Would she leave after her visit to Leon, just take the next train out of Liverpool Street, or would she decide to come and see me and stay a few days so that I would have some company and to tell me about her life? I knew that I was hoping desperately to see her and I knew that this was very foolish of me and that really I should have been wiser than that.
    When I went into Leon’s room, I saw that they had propped him up a bit and his right eye was wide open, staring fixedly at a chrysanthemum plant on a table near the end of his bed.
    â€œLeon,” I said quietly and to my surprise he turned his head a little and looked at me. I smiled at him, wished I had come with the Australian daffodils so that I could hold them out to him.
    â€œHow are you today, dear?” I began as I often begin. And it was then that a sound came out of Leon’s mouth, a little breathless sound, the very first he has made since he had his stroke.
    â€œGo on, Leon,” I said, standing still in the middle of the room, and with a great effort of concentration he made his mouth move again and another noise escaped it, tuneless, meaningless but there, and with it a little dribble of saliva that ran down his chin.
    I took a handkerchief out of my crocodile handbag, went to Leon and wiped the dribble away. Then I sat on the bed and took his hand, watching his face for any sign of another noise. But he seemed to have given up and was content just to stare at me.
    â€œI hear you had another visitor today, Leon,” I said, carefully jollying my voice along. “I expect she brought you that lovely chrysanthemum plant, dear, didn’t she? But I do wonder who she was, Leon. Because no one comes except me, do they? I can’t think who it could have been unless it was . . .” I was going to say Alexandra and then thought better of it. I didn’t know what the sound of her name might do to him. But it was at that moment that Leon pulled his right hand free of mine, reached for the slate and began to write in his slow shaky hand. It took him a long time to write the one word that was on his mind, but he finished it eventually and pushed the slate towards me. He had written “tomorrow”.
    I didn’t know what he meant, Sister. I simply looked at the word and nodded and after that I didn’t stay very much longer. With the afternoon being so dark outside the blind, I suddenly had the notion that after my visit to Highgate and my lunch in the Italian café and my wait in the leather armchair, it had grown terribly late and that in writing “tomorrow” Leon was saying he was too tired to see me and wanted me gone.

C HRISTMAS E VE

    I’ve done nothing about Christmas this year. No dyed teasels in Grandma Constad’s hideous vase, no wreath on the front door of the flat. And I’ve asked no one round. I would have invited Gerald Tibbs, but still his telephone doesn’t answer and each day I feel more and more certain that he’s in Milan by now, lying dead in a gutter, his white face carved up by a broken chianti