Mrs. Palmer was dying, there was no doubt of that to her or to anyone else in the household. The household had grown from two, Mrs. Palmer and Elsie the housemaid, to four in the past ten days. Elsie’s daughter Liza, age fourteen, had come to help her mother, and had brought their shaggy sheepdog Princy—who to Mrs. Palmer made a fourth presence in the house. Liza spent most of her time doing things in the kitchen, and slept in the little low-ceilinged room with double-deck bunks down the steps from Mrs. Palmer’s room. The cottage was small—a sitting room and dining alcove and kitchen downstairs, and upstairs Mrs. Palmer’s bedroom, the room with the two bunks, and a tiny back room where Elsie slept. All the ceilings were low and the doorways and the ceiling above the stairway even lower, so that one had to duck one’s head constantly.
Mrs. Palmer reflected that she would have to duck her head very few times more, as she rose only a couple of times a day, making her way, her lavender dressing gown clutched about her against the chill, to the bathroom. She had leukemia. She was not in any pain, but she was terribly weak. She was sixty-one. Her son Gregory, an officer in the R.A.F., was stationed in the Middle East, and perhaps would come in time and perhaps wouldn’t. Mrs. Palmer had purposely not made her telegram urgent, not wanting to upset or inconvenience him, and his telegraphed reply had simply said that he would do his best to get leave to fly to her, and would let her know when. A cowardly telegram hers had been, Mrs. Palmer thought. Why hadn’t she had the courage to say outright, “Am going to die in about a week. Can you come to see me?”
“Missus Palmer?” Elsie stuck her head in the door, one floury hand resting against the doorjamb. “Did Missus Blynn say four-thirty or five-thirty today?”
Mrs. Palmer did not know, and it did not seem in the least important. “I think five-thirty.”
Elsie gave a preoccupied nod, her mind on what she would serve for five-thirty tea as opposed to four-thirty tea. The five-thirty tea could be less substantial, as Mrs. Blynn would already have had tea somewhere.
“Anything I can get you, Missus Palmer?” she asked in a sweet voice, with a genuine concern.
“No, thank you, Elsie, I’m quite comfortable.” Mrs. Palmer sighed as Elsie closed the door again. Elsie was willing, but unintelligent. Mrs. Palmer could not talk to her, not that she would have wanted to talk intimately to her, but it would have been nice to have the feeling that she could talk to someone in the house if she wished to.
Mrs. Palmer had no close friends in the town, because she had been here only a month. She had been en route to Scotland when the weakness came on her again and she had collapsed on a train platform in Ipswich. A long journey to Scotland by train or even airplane had been out of the question, so on a strange doctor’s recommendation Mrs. Palmer had hired a taxi and driven to a town on the east coast called Eamington, where the doctor knew there was a visiting nurse, and where the air was splendid and bracing. The doctor had evidently thought she needed only a few weeks’ rest and she would be on her feet again, but Mrs. Palmer had had a premonition that this wasn’t true. She had felt better the first few days in the quiet little town, she had found the cottage called Sea Maiden and rented it at once, but the spurt of energy had been brief. In Sea Maiden she had collapsed again, and Mrs. Palmer had the feeling that Elsie and even a few other acquaintances she had made, like Mr. Frowley the real-estate agent, resented her faiblesse. She was not only a stranger come to trouble them, to make demands on them, but her relapse belied the salubrious powers of Eamington air—just now mostly gale-force winds which swept from the northeast day and night, tearing the buttons from one’s coat, plastering a sticky, opaque film of salt and spray on the windows of all the houses on the seafront. Mrs. Palmer was sorry to be a burden herself, but at least she could pay for it, she thought. She had rented a rather shabby cottage that would otherwise have stayed empty all winter, since it was early February now, she was employing Elsie at slightly better than average Eamington wages, she paid Mrs. Blynn a guinea per half-hour visit (and most of that half hour was taken up with her tea), and she soon would bring business to the undertaker, the sexton, and perhaps the shopkeeper who sold flowers. She had also paid her rent through March.
Hearing a quick tread on the pavement, in a lull in the wind’s roar, Mrs. Palmer sat up a little in bed. Mrs. Blynn was arriving. An anxious frown touched Mrs. Palmer’s thin-skinned forehead, but she smiled faintly, too, with beforehand politeness. She reached for the long-handled mirror that lay on her bed table. Her gray face had ceased to shock her or to make her feel shame. Age was age, death was death, and not pretty, but she still had the impulse to do what she could to look nicer for the world. She tucked some hair back into place, moistened her lips, tried a little smile, pulled a shoulder of her nightdress even with the other and her pink cardigan closer about her. Her pallor made the blue of her eyes much bluer. That was a pleasant thought.
Elsie knocked and opened the door at the same time. “Missus Blynn, Ma’am.”
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Palmer,” Mrs. Blynn said, coming down the two steps from the threshold into Mrs. Palmer’s room. She was a full-bodied, dark-blond woman of middle height, about forty-five, and she wore her usual bulky two-piece black suit with a rose-colored floral pin on her left breast. She also wore pale-pink lipstick and rather high heels. Like many women in Eamington, she was a sea widow, and had taken up nursing after she was forty. She was highly thought of in the town as an energetic woman who did useful work. “And how are you this afternoon?”
“Good afternoon. Well as can be expected, I think you’d say,” Mrs. Palmer said with an effort at cheerfulness. Already she was loosening the covers, preparatory to pushing them back entirely for her daily injection.
But Mrs. Blynn was standing with an absent smile in the center of the room, hands folded backward on her hips, surveying the walls, gazing out the window. Mrs. Blynn had once lived in this house with her husband, for six months when they were first married, and every day Mrs. Blynn said something about it. Mrs. Blynn’s husband had been the captain of a merchant ship, and had gone down with it ten years ago in a collision with a Swedish ship only fifty nautical miles from Eamington. Mrs. Blynn had never married again. Elsie said that her house was filled with photographs of the captain in uniform and of his ship.
“Yes-s, it’s a wonderful little house,” Mrs. Blynn said, “even if the wind does come in a bit.” She looked at Mrs. Palmer with brighter eyes, as if she were about to say, “Well, now, a few more of these injections and you’ll be as fit as can be, won’t you?”
But in the next seconds Mrs. Blynn’s expression changed. She groped in her black bag for the needle and the bottle of clear fluid that would do no good. Her mouth lost its smile and drooped, and deeper lines came at its corners. By the time she plunged the needle into Mrs. Palmer’s fleshless body, her bulging green-gray eyes were glassy, as if she saw nothing and did not need to see anything: this was her business, and she knew how to do it. Mrs. Palmer was an object, which paid a guinea a visit. The object was going to die. Mrs. Blynn became apathetic, as if even the cutting off of the guinea in three days or eight days mattered nothing to her, either.
Guineas as such mattered nothing to Mrs. Palmer, but in view of the fact that she was soon quitting this world she wished Mrs. Blynn could show something so human as a desire to prolong the guineas. Mrs. Blynn’s eyes remained glassy, even when she glanced at the door to see if Elsie was coming in with her tea. Occasionally the floorboards in the hall cracked from the heat or the lack of it, and so they did when someone walked just outside the door.
The injection hurt today, but Mrs. Palmer did not flinch. It was really such a small thing; she smiled at the slightness of it. “A little sunshine today, wasn’t there?” Mrs. Palmer said.
“Was there?” Mrs. Blynn jerked the needle out.
“Around eleven this morning. I noticed it.” Weakly she gestured toward the window behind her.
“We can certainly use it,” Mrs. Blynn said, putting her equipment back in her bag. “Goodness, we can use that fire, too.” She had fastened her bag, and now she chafed her palms, huddling toward the grate.
Princy was stretched full length before the fire, looking like a rolled-up shag rug.
Mrs. Palmer tried to think of something pleasant to say about Mrs. Blynn’s husband, their time in this house, the town, anything. She could only think of how lonely Mrs. Blynn’s life must be since her husband died. They had had no children. According to Elsie, Mrs. Blynn had worshipped her husband, and took pride in never having remarried. “Have you many patients this time of year?” Mrs. Palmer asked.
“Oh, yes. Like always,” Mrs. Blynn said, still facing the fire and rubbing her hands.
Who? Mrs. Palmer wondered. Tell me about them. She waited, breathing softly.
Elsie knocked once, by bumping a corner of the tray against the door.
“Come in, Elsie,” they both said, Mrs. Blynn a bit louder.
“Here we are,” Elsie said, setting the tray down on a hassock made by two massive olive-green pillows, one atop the other. Butter slid down the side of a scone, spread onto the plate, and began to congeal while Elsie poured the tea.
Elsie handed Mrs. Palmer a cup of tea with three lumps of sugar, but no scone, because Mrs. Blynn said they were too indigestible for her. Mrs. Palmer did not mind. She appreciated the sight of well-buttered scones, anyway, and of healthy people like Mrs. Blynn eating them. She was offered a ginger biscuit and declined it. Mrs. Blynn talked briefly to Elsie about her water pipes, about the reduced price of something at the butcher’s this week, while Elsie stood with folded arms, leaning against the edge of the door, letting in a frigid draft on Mrs. Palmer. Elsie was taking in all Mrs. Blynn’s information about prices. Now it was ketchup at the health store. On sale this week.
“Call me if you’d like something,” Elsie said, as usual, ducking out the door.
Mrs. Blynn was sunk in her scones, leaning over so the dripping butter would fall on the stone floor and not on her skirt.
Mrs. Palmer shivered, and drew the covers up.
“Is your son coming?” Mrs. Blynn asked in a loud, clear voice, looking straight at Mrs. Palmer.
Mrs. Palmer did not know what Elsie had told Mrs. Blynn. She had told Elsie that he might come, that was all. “I haven’t heard yet. He’s probably waiting to tell me the exact time he’ll come—or to find out if he can or not. You know how it is in the Air Force.”
“Um-m,” Mrs. Blynn said through a scone, as if of course she knew, having had a husband who had been in service. “He’s your only son and heir, I take it.”
“My only one,” Mrs. Palmer said.
“Married?”
“Yes.” Then, anticipating the next question, “He has one child, a daughter, but she’s still very small.”
Mrs. Blynn’s eyes kept drifting to Mrs. Palmer’s bed table, and suddenly Mrs. Palmer realized what she was looking at—her amethyst pin. Mrs. Palmer had worn it for a few days on her cardigan sweater, until she had felt so bad that the pin ceased to lift her spirits and became almost tawdry, and she had removed it.
“That’s a beautiful pin,” Mrs. Blynn said.
“Yes. My husband gave it to me years ago.”
Mrs. Blynn came over to look at it, but she did not touch it. The rectangular amethyst was set in small diamonds. She stood up, looking down at it with alert, bulging eyes. “I suppose you’ll pass it on to your son—or his wife.”
Mrs. Palmer flushed with embarrassment, or anger. She hadn’t thought to whom she would pass it on, particularly. “I suppose my son will get everything, as my heir.”
“I hope his wife appreciates it,” Mrs. Blynn said, turning on her heel with a smile, setting her cup down in its saucer.
Then Mrs. Palmer realized that for the last few days it was the pin that Mrs. Blynn had been looking at when her eyes drifted over to the bed table. When Mrs. Blynn had gone, Mrs. Palmer picked up the pin and held it in her palm protectively. Her jewel box was across the room. Elsie came in, and Mrs. Palmer said, “Elsie, would you mind handing me that blue box over there?”
“Certainly, Ma’am,” Elsie said, swerving from the tea tray to the box on the top of the bookshelf. “This the one?”
“Yes, thank you.” Mrs. Palmer took it, opened the lid, and dropped the pin on her pearls. She had not much jewelry, perhaps ten or eleven pieces, but each piece meant a special occasion in her life, or a special period, and she loved them all. She looked at Elsie’s blunt, homely profile as she bent over the tray, arranging everything so that it could be carried out at once.
“That Mrs. Blynn,” Elsie said, shaking her head, not looking at Mrs. Palmer. “Asked me if I thought your son was coming. How was I to know? I said yes, I thought so.” Now she stood with the tray, looking at Mrs. Palmer, and she smiled awkwardly, as if she had said perhaps too much. “The trouble with Mrs. Blynn is she’s always nosing—if you’ll pardon me saying so. Asking questions, you know?”
Mrs. Palmer nodded, feeling too low just at that moment to make a comment. She had no comment, anyway. Elsie, she thought, had passed back and forth by the amethyst pin for days and never mentioned it, never touched it, maybe never even noticed it. Mrs. Palmer suddenly realized how much more she liked Elsie than she liked Mrs. Blynn.
“The trouble with Mrs. Blynn—she means well, but . . .” Elsie floundered and jiggled the tray in her effort to shrug. “It’s too bad. Everyone’s always saying it about her,” she finished, as if this summed it up, and started out the door. But she turned with the door open. “At tea, for instance. It’s always get this and get that for her, as if she were a grand lady or something. A day ahead she tells me. I don’t see why she don’t bring what she wants from the bakery now and then herself. If you know what I mean.”
Mrs. Palmer nodded. She supposed she knew. She knew. Mrs. Blynn was like a nursemaid she had had for a time for Gregory. Like a divorcée she and her husband had known in London. She was like a lot of people.
Mrs. Palmer died two days later. It was a day when Mrs. Blynn came in and out, perhaps six times, perhaps eight. A telegram had arrived that morning from Gregory, saying that he had at last wangled leave and would take off in a matter of hours, landing at a military field near Eamington. Mrs. Palmer did not know if she would see him again or not; she could not judge her strength that far. Mrs. Blynn took her temperature and felt her pulse frequently, then pivoted on one foot in the room, looking about as if she were alone and thinking her own thoughts. Her expression was blankly pleasant, her peaches-and-cream cheeks aglow with health.
“Your son’s due today,” Mrs. Blynn half said, half asked, on one of her visits.
“Yes,” Mrs. Palmer said.
It was then dusk, though it was only four in the afternoon.
That was the last clear exchange she had with anyone, for she sank into a kind of dream. She saw Mrs. Blynn staring at the blue box on the top of the bookshelf, staring at it even as she shook the thermometer down. Mrs. Palmer called for Elsie and had her bring the box to her. Mrs. Blynn was not in the room then.
“This is to go to my son when he comes,” Mrs. Palmer said. “All of it. Everything. You understand? It’s all written . . .” But, even though it was all itemized, a single piece like the amethyst pin might be missing and Gregory would never do anything about it, maybe not even notice, maybe think she’d lost it somewhere in the last weeks and not reported it. Gregory was like that. Then Mrs. Palmer smiled at herself, and also reproached herself. You can’t take it with you. That was very true, and people who tried to were despicable and rather absurd. “Elsie, this is yours,” Mrs. Palmer said, and handed Elsie the amethyst pin.
“Oh, Mrs. Palmer! Oh, no, I couldn’t take that!” Elsie said, not taking it, and in fact retreating a step.
“You’ve been very good to me,” Mrs. Palmer said. She was very tired, and her arm dropped to the bed. “Very well,” she murmured, seeing that it was really no use.
Her son came at six that evening, sat with her on the edge of her bed, held her hand and kissed her forehead. But when she died Mrs. Blynn was closest, bending over her with her great round peaches-and-cream face and her green-gray eyes as expressionless as some fantastic reptile’s. Mrs. Blynn, to the last, continued to say crisp, efficient things to her, like “Breathe easily. That’s it,” and “Not chilly, are you? Good.” Somebody had mentioned a priest earlier, but this had been overruled by both Gregory and Mrs. Palmer. So it was Mrs. Blynn’s eyes that she looked into as her life left her. Mrs. Blynn so authoritative, strong, efficient, one might have taken her for God himself. Especially since when Mrs. Palmer looked toward her son she couldn’t really see him, only a vague pale-blue figure in the corner, tall and erect, with a dark spot at the top that was his hair. He was looking at her, but now she was too weak to call him. Anyway, Mrs. Blynn had shooed them all back. Elsie was standing against the closed door, ready to run out for something, ready to take any order. Near her was the smaller figure of Liza, who occasionally whispered something and was shushed by her mother. In an instant, Mrs. Palmer saw her entire life—her carefree childhood and youth, her happy marriage, the blight of the death of her other son at the age of ten, the shock of her husband’s death eight years ago—but all in all a happy life, she supposed, though she could wish that her own character had been better, purer, that she had never shown temper or selfishness, for instance. All that was past now, but what remained was a feeling that she had been imperfect, wrong, like Mrs. Blynn’s presence now, like Mrs. Blynn’s faint smile, wrong, wrong for the time and the occasion. Mrs. Blynn did not understand her. Mrs. Blynn did not know her. Mrs. Blynn, somehow, could not comprehend good will. Therein lay the flaw, and the flaw of life itself. Life is a long failure of understanding, Mrs. Palmer thought, a long, mistaken shutting of the heart.
Mrs. Palmer had the amethyst pin in her closed left hand. Hours ago, sometime in the afternoon, she had taken it with an idea of safekeeping, but now she realized the absurdity of that. She had also wanted to give it to Gregory directly, and had forgotten. Her closed hand lifted an inch or so, her lips moved, but no sound came. She wanted to give it to Mrs. Blynn: one positive and generous gesture she could still make to this essence of nonunderstanding, she thought, but now she had not the strength to make her want known—and that was like life, too, everything a little too late. Mrs. Palmer’s lids shut on the vision of Mrs. Blynn’s glassy, attentive eyes. ♦
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