Just before Christmas time, my Grandmother fell ill. She had
grown very old and frail in the last years. The war had worn
her out.
I went to her at Campden Hill Square. It was like long ago, before
I married Walter; I had not been to stay there, for more than
a night, since then.
Grandmother said that she was glad to have me there.
‘It is like old times,’ she said.
They said she would not get better; they said that she was too
old. She might last a few weeks, not more, the doctor said.
And so I stayed with her, and she talked a great deal to me,
mostly about my father when he was a little boy, and all that
had happened then, nearly sixty years before, and when she was
first married, and about my grandfather, when he was young.
And I thought:
‘Time does not matter. There is no time for her.’
And I thought:
‘It will be like that for me too, before long.’
Two days before she died, I was sitting in her room, her sitting-room
upstairs, where she always used to sit, and she was by the fire,
in her own big armchair, for she would not stay in bed, and she
began to talk of much more recent things, of the War, and of
Hugo, and then of Walter and me.
‘Dear child,’ she said, ‘I am glad that you married him. . . .
I have wondered, but I am glad. He will always be the same . . .
you know the worst of him, and it is not a bad worst.’
I don’t know what I said. I was on the floor beside her, and
she stroked my head as she talked.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘poor Hugo . . . that never would have
done. I was very much afraid, at one time, that you would marry
him. Poor, dear Hugo . . . he would not have been a good husband . . .
it is better as it is. . . .’
And I felt that I could not bear it . . . I felt I must tell
her everything, that it was all a mistake . . . that everything
was wrong. . . . I looked into the fire, and the words rose up
to my lips, and I nearly told her then, but I am glad that I
did not.