Providence by Anita Brookner

likes me to spend as much time as possible with her at the weekends. But that leaves you quite free. You could be an angel and take the dog out. If he can keep awake, that is. He gets no exercise at all.’
    Kitty breathed conscientiously as she got out of the car, as people will when they think it is going to do them good. Pauline, who was aware of the existence of the nuclear power plant twenty-five hazy miles distant, smiled wryly to herself but said nothing. Years of living with her mother had made her adept at keeping bad news to herself.
    But Mrs Bentley and Kitty were delighted with each other. In a cool low-ceilinged little room, its windows obscured by fleshy green plants in brass pots, Kitty sat on a stool beside a wing chair, while Pauline retired to the kitchen and got on with the lunch. Mrs Bentley, in the chair, put out a large shaking liver-spotted hand, and Kitty took it and held it for a moment between both of her own. She noted the bony but still active frame, the man’s handkerchief protruding from the pocket of the cardigan, the thin white hair following the shape of the large skull, the long narrow feet passive in childish sandals.
    ‘Now, my dear,’ said Mrs Bentley, in her rather carrying lecturer’s voice. ‘You must tell me who you areand what you are, for I can’t see a thing for myself you know.’
    ‘I am called Kitty,’ said Kitty, ‘although my name is Thérèse. I work with Pauline in …’
    ‘Why are you called Kitty if your name is Thérèse?’ asked Mrs Bentley with great interest. And Kitty, who did not normally talk about such matters, found herself telling Mrs Bentley about her grandparents and her mother and father; it was not much of a story but it pleased Mrs Bentley, who got rather tired of Radio Three, placed conveniently near her chair. Kitty’s story was like one of the Edwardian novels she could no longer read. When Pauline came back with the tray and started arranging plates on a small table which she moved close to her mother’s chair, Kitty was describing her mother’s wedding dress, now shrouded in tissue paper, but still hanging in her grandparents’ flat, and the small satin shoes that went with it.
    ‘But that is charming!’ cried Mrs Bentley. ‘And do you speak French at home? That must give you a head start with your work.’
    Pauline smiled faintly as she moved a plate, on which the food was cut into small pieces, and touched her mother’s wrist to it. Mrs Bentley took a fork in her shaking hand, and they began their lunch.
    ‘I don’t get out now,’ said Mrs Bentley in a matter of fact voice. ‘Except when Pauline takes me in the car and then I feel a little dizzy, not being able to see.’
    ‘My grandmother never goes out,’ said Kitty, retrieving a slice of tomato which was slowly descending the rugged surface of Mrs Bentley’s cardigan.
    ‘I wish we could meet. Old women have such a lot to talk about, even if they don’t know each other. And the two of us with only one daughter.’
    For a moment they all contemplated this possibility. Then they recognized it as an impossibility, and discardedit. Pauline glanced swiftly at Kitty, who was mopping up Mrs Bentley’s spilled glass of water with her handkerchief. When she saw that Kitty’s face was calm and unembarrassed, she relaxed. Kitty, for her part, was not unused to the petty squalors of old age, and did not think about them. She worried far more about being her own age and not making the most of it.
    They had a cup of coffee; Mrs Bentley took a battered tin and a packet of cigarette papers out of the pocket of her cardigan and began to roll a cigarette between large trembling fingers. When ignited, it burned like a flare for a second or two and then went out.
    ‘Will you have one of mine, Mrs Bentley?’ asked Kitty.
    ‘No thank you, my dear, I really just like messing about with my tin. Habit, really. It was my husband’s, you see. And anyway, I usually have my rest about now.