“Mamma, Mamma,” the children said, over and over.
“I loved the cards and pictures you sent me,” Bee said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t always write back as much as I wanted. But they kept me going in that place, being able to see your drawings. I missed you so much. And you’ve grown. It’s not fair you growing while I couldn’t see you!”
They had grown, but not as much as Bee had shrunk. Pat managed to haul Bee up into the old green velvet armchair, which she said she wanted. “I need to get my arms really strong,” Bee said. “I’ve been having physio, and I need to have more. I need to swim, and exercise. I can swing myself from the wheelchair to the toilet—did you get bars put in the toilet?”
“Yes, yes, and we have a new toilet downstairs!” Philip said.
“Two toilets, what would my parents say!” Bee said, smiling over his head at Pat. “Luxury! And then what we need is an electric wheelchair. They’re expensive, but it’ll be worth it. And I can propel this one myself, if there aren’t any steps. Wheel it over here, one of you.”
Jinny won the tussle and wheeled the chair over next to the armchair. “A bit more this way, good. Now watch,” Bee said, as she swung herself from the chair into the wheelchair.
Pat’s heart was in her throat. “Don’t fall!” she said.
“I fall a lot,” Bee said. “It’s better to risk falling than to give in.”
“Doesn’t it hurt?” Jinny asked.
“Yes, it hurts, but there are worse things. And speaking of hurting, try not to bounce on me quite so much!”
“I love you,” Pat said. “I am so glad to have you home.”
“No matter how glad you can’t be as glad as I am to be out of bloody hospitals!” Bee said. “Now, I’m going to have arms like an orangutan, so I hope that’s all right?”
“That’s wonderful,” Pat said. “Now dinner?”
“Food!” Bee said. “Not that awful hospital pap! How I have been looking forward to some real food!”
“It’s pasta with mushrooms and chicken,” Flossie confided. “Oh, and Eva in Perche No! wanted to send you some gelato.”
“Mum told me about that in hospital,” Bee said. “Well, next summer.”
Bee was plainly exhausted by the time the girls went to bed. “Let’s give them half an hour to fall asleep and go to bed ourselves,” Pat said. “We can talk in bed.”
“More than talk,” Bee said.
“I can see how tired you are,” Pat said.
“Not so tired as I am randy.” Bee laughed. “Four months in hospital, and I hadn’t seen you for weeks before that.”
They went up to bed. Bee swung herself onto the stairlift and off again onto the light wheelchair Pat had bought for upstairs. “This one is no good,” Bee said. “It can only be pushed.”
“I’ll push it for now,” Pat said. “We’ll get another self-propelled one for up here. Or if we get an electric one for downstairs we can haul that one up here.”
“That’s the best idea,” Bee said.
In bed they held each other quietly for a long time before either of them made a move towards making love. Afterwards Bee lay back against the pillows. “Well, that’s something I don’t need legs for.”
Pat laughed, but she was close to tears. “You’re wonderful,” she said. “Did it hurt you, making love?”
“Well … yes. A little. But not enough to stop me.” Bee kissed Pat. “What we need to do is get a lawyer and sort out powers of attorney and all of that. Whatever we need to do to become each other’s next of kin. I never thought of it until I needed it. And about the children too, to name each other as guardians. I think that’s the way to do it, legally. Each other and Michael—if he’ll agree, and I think he will. I don’t know how I would have coped without Michael when it first happened. He was a tower, he really was. He’d listen to me, when Donald and the doctors wouldn’t. And he posted that letter to you. And he put up with all that fuss and the papers and everything.”
“Bless him,” Pat said. “Yes, we need to do that.”
“I’m lucky to be alive, and Jinny’s even luckier that I’m alive. If I’d been killed I don’t know what would have happened to her, but they might not have let you keep her.”
“I don’t think they would,” Pat said. “I got her into the country on sheer class privilege—she’s on your passport and I didn’t think. Thank goodness for the identity cards, because she had that. There was a social worker looking at the arrangements for you coming home, and she asked me about the children. We need to set that up for all of them—it might be me something happens to. I was thinking Donald and your mother might have agreed to let me keep Jinny, but they might not. And if something happened to me, who is there? My mother wouldn’t be able to make any decisions.”