Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín Page B

nothing to do with him.
    “Make yourself a cup of tea, Nora,” Catherine said, “and if you can find bread and the toaster . . . God, it’ll be a relief to get this done. But at least I have plenty of help.”
    “I’m going out for a walk,” she said.
    Catherine turned and looked puzzled.
    “It’s very showery now. I don’t think it’s a good day for walking and we’ll be going into Kilkenny later, I have to get detergent for this machine. You know, I’m nearly sorry I bought it. It’s just that Dilly says it halves the work.”
    “I’ll find an umbrella,” Nora said.
    “The umbrellas are in the stand by the front door,” Catherine said. “Will you mind the front door if you’re using it? It gets very stiff in this damp weather.”
    This was what no one had told her about. She could not have ordinary feelings, ordinary desires. Catherine saw this, she thought, and she had no idea how to deal with it, and this made things worse. As Nora walked down the drive towards the road she felt a rage that she could not control. But she would have to control it, sheknew. It made no sense to think that she would not come back here again, to feel a rage against her sister that up to now she had directed solely at the doctor who controlled the ward where Maurice lay in the last days of his life; a rage that caused her to write letters to him in her mind, letters she imagined herself signing and posting, letters that were abusive or coldly factual, letters threatening him that she would let people know wherever he went what he had done when her husband was dying, that he had refused to deal with the pain that caused Maurice to moan. She had sought out the doctor several times, having asked the nurses over and over if they could do anything. All of the nurses had come back with her to the bed and nodded and agreed with her that something would have to be done. But the doctor—the very thought of him made her walk faster and become even more indifferent to the clouds that were gathering overhead—had not come with her to the bed, but had told her that her husband was very sick, that his heart was weak, and so he did not want to prescribe anything to alleviate pain that might affect his heart.
    And so Nora and Jim and Margaret had sat by his bed with the screen pulled around it so that the other patients and their visitors could not see. But they could hear. And when Father Quaid from the manse and Sister Thomas from the St. John of God convent had both visited, they had heard too. Nora and Margaret held Maurice’s hands and spoke to him and tried to soothe and console him and they promised him that he would be all right, but they knew that he would not be without pain again until he died.
    Death, however, would not come. And Maurice was in such pain that catching his hand when he reached out was almost dangerous because he would clutch so tight. He was more alive then than he had ever been before, she thought, because of his needs and his panicand his fear and the pain that seemed to be burning in him until he was like an animal bellowing and then he could be heard not only in the corridor but even in the reception area of the hospital too.
    Working in such a small hospital, a hospital that would soon be closed down, she thought, was clearly not what that doctor had planned when he was studying medicine. He seemed to be the only doctor there, on call day and night, which meant that he could seldom be found. Being stationed in a rural hospital with no surgical wards or private rooms, no heart specialists nor professors guiding students through wards, must have been a humiliation. He knew nothing about pain or death, and she remembered him now speaking to her as though she was wasting the time of a very busy man. She felt a profound and active hatred for him and the feeling was like a strange sort of pleasure as she walked along and the rain started.
    When the rain became heavy, Catherine came in the car to fetch her.