Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(190)
Barbara wondered about the question. She didn't much want to consider the true answer. She said, “Nothing. Nothing really.”
“Good,” Emily replied. “Let's take on Muhannad.”
OU HAVE YOURSELF A CUPPA, MR. SHAW. I'LL BE right outside at the station, just where I am on every shift. If she takes a turn, I'll hear the machines start bleating.”
“Actually, I'm fine, Sister. I don't need—”
“No argument, young man. You look dead as a ghoul. You were here half the night, and you won't do anyone a bit of good if you don't start taking better care of yourself.”
It was the day nurse's voice. Agatha recognised it. She didn't have to open her eyes to know who was speaking to her grandson, which was just as well, because opening her eyes felt as if it would take too damned much effort. And besides, she didn't want to look at anyone. She didn't want to have to see the pity in their faces. She knew well enough what they'd be seeing to inspire that pity: a wreck of a woman, a virtual carcase, all shrivelled up on one side, her left leg useless, her left hand clawed into a dead bird's talon, her head tilted, her mouth and one eye following that tilt, and the disgusting drool following them both.
“All right, Mrs. Jacobs,” Theo said to the nurse, and Agatha realised that he did sound tired. He sounded both exhausted and unwell. And at this thought she felt a moment of panic clutching at her lungs, making it suddenly difficult to breathe. What if something happened to Theo? she wondered feverishly. She hadn't once considered the possibility, but what if he didn't take care of himself? What if he fell ill? Or was in an accident? What, then, would become of her?
She felt his nearness from the scent of him: that clean odour of soap and the faint lime smell of the astringent he used. She felt the mattress of the hospital bed depress slightly as he leaned over her.
“Gran?” he whispered. “I'm going down to the cafeteria, but don't you worry. I won't be long.”
“You'll be long enough to have yourself a decent meal,” Sister Jacobs said curtly. “If you're back here in less than an hour, lad, I'm sending you off again. See if I don't.”
“What a task master she is, eh, Gran?” Theo said in some amusement. Agatha felt his dry lips press against her forehead. “I'll be back in sixty-one minutes, then. You have a good rest.”
Rest? Agatha queried incredulously. How was she supposed to rest? When she closed her eyes, all she could see in her mind's vision was the hideous spectacle she herself presented: a misshapen shell of the vital woman she once had been, now helpless, immobile, catheterised, dependent. And when she tried to dismiss that vision in order to imagine the future instead, what she pictured in its place was what she had seen and scorned a thousand times, driving along the Esplanade below the Avenues in Balford, where that line of nursing homes overlooked the sea. There, the discarded ancients tottered, clinging to their zimmer frames for support. Their backbones permanently curved like the mark of a question no one had the courage to ask, they shuffled along the pavement, an army of the forgotten and infirm. She'd been aware of these relics of humanity since her girlhood. And since her girlhood she'd sworn to herself that she'd end her own life before she was reduced to becoming one of their numbers.
Only now she didn't want to end her own life. She wanted to take her life back, and she knew that she needed Theo to do it.
“Now, now, sweetie, something tells me you're wide awake under those eyelids of yours.” Sister Jacobs was hanging over the bed. She wore a man's heavy deodorant, and when she perspired—which was copiously and often—the odour of spice wafted off her body like steam rolling off boiling water. Her hands smoothed back Agatha's hair. A comb went through it, caught on a tangle, pulled insistently, then gave up the effort. “Lovely grandboy you've got, Mrs. Shaw. Such a love, he is. I've a daughter who'd like to meet your Theo. Available, is he? I ought to invite her round for a cuppa when I take my break. I think they'd get on, my Donna and your Theo. What d'you think of that? Would you like a nice granddaughter-in-law, Mrs. Shaw? She could help you in your recovery, my Donna.”
Absolutely not, Agatha thought. Some peabrained tart with her claws into Theo was exactly what she did not need. What she needed was escape from this place, along with peace and quiet to gather her strength for the upcoming battle of convalescence. Peace and quiet were scarce commodities when one was lying in a hospital bed. In a hospital bed, what one received were probings, proddings, prickings, and pity. And she wanted none of that.
Pity was the worst. She hated pity. She herself felt it for no one, and she wanted no one to feel it for her. She'd rather experience others’ aversion—which was what she'd felt for those doddering bits of human detritus on the Esplanade—than find herself a paralysed pilgarlic, the sort of person people spoke about rather than to, when they were in her presence. Aversion implied fear and horror, which could be used ultimately to one's own advantage. Pity implied the other's superiority, which Agatha had never had to face in her life. And she would not face it now, she swore.
If she allowed anyone to gain ascendancy over her, she would be defeated. Defeated, she would see her plans for Balford's future quashed. Nothing would remain of Agatha Shaw upon her death save whatever memories her grandson had and chose—when the time was right, of course—to pass on to future generations. But how could she rely upon Theo's devotion to her memory? He'd have other responsibilities then. So if her memory was to be established, if her life was to be given meaning before that life ended, she would have to do it herself. She would have to put the pieces and the players in position. Which was what she'd been in the course of doing when the damnable stroke supervened, knocking her plans awry.