Fifteen
‘Lorna . . . Lorna are you . . . there?’
Again Delia was met with silence. She had no idea how long it was since she had awakened and lay muzzily calling for her cousin to help her to the bathroom. Where was the wretched Lorna? For that matter where was Soames? There were no sounds coming from below in the shop, no bell ringing to announce customers.
Delia was consumed by panic, the same kind of vile choking feeling she was experiencing more and more. They had abandoned her, had gone for good. That crazy lurching dream was not a dream at all, but real. Soames and Lorna had packed their bags and sneaked away leaving her alone, to wither and starve and weaken and die.
‘Ohh!’ She began to cry and fat tears seared down the sides of her face and ran into her ears. The two people who were supposed to be caring for her had absconded and left her to die in her own wetness, for that would be the case if she didn’t soon get on the lavatory seat. She had been left to die in agony and humiliation. Lorna, the bitch, the wicked taunting bitch, had resolutely refused to let her have the commode in the bedroom until the evening and more than once Delia had suffered the horror of her own hot burning pungent urine wetting her lower regions.
Then through her mugginess Delia realized she didn’t have to stay put and wait for that cruel fate, for her own evilly arranged murder to catch up with her. Her limbs might feel like lead weights – and sometimes as if she had no limbs at all – but Nurse Rumford had kept expressing to her that she did have strength in her arms and legs, that the weakness was all in her mind. The nurse spoke either patiently or briskly to her, stubbornly refusing to believe that Delia was as weak as a newborn kitten. ‘You have to try, Mrs Newton. You have to change the way you think. I’ll lift your legs down over the side of the bed and then Miss Barbary and I will take you by the arms and walk you up and down the landing. You can do it, try, try, try. If you persist in just lying there, in giving up, you will lose all your muscle tone and you truly will become an invalid. Ignore feelings of dizziness, even of feeling sick. You can walk. Come along now, trust in Miss Barbary and me and between us we’ll have you up and about in no time. Think how wonderful it will be to sit in your armchair in your sitting room again.’
Nurse Rumford had been gentle and strong with her but Lorna always managed to hurt Delia and drag her to the bathroom rather than support her carefully.
‘She’s hurting me,’ Delia would cry.
‘No, I’m not, I’m doing my best,’ Lorna would wail. And Nurse Rumford believed her because Lorna was sly about pinching Delia or grabbing her roughly.
‘Try not to make a fuss, Mrs Newton. Be brave, be determined,’ Nurse Rumford would say.
When Delia was back in bed gasping for breath after each ordeal, Nurse Rumford wrote down her notes and ignored Delia’s distress. Delia would lament, ‘I’m not putting it on. I feel really terrible. Let me sleep, all I want to do is sleep.’
When Nurse Rumford left, Lorna would leer down at Delia. ‘Now you know what it feels like for the shoe to be on the other foot. For years you tormented me, made me feel less than a worm. You were brave and determined in those days about putting me down every chance you got. Me and others like poor Mrs Rawling. The first day she came into the shop after her daughter’s murder you cruelly told her that her Mary got what she deserved, shot like a dog for fornicating. You destroyed the remains of the poor woman’s dignity. You’re an evil, malicious witch. Well, you’re the one who is shit under my shoes now. I hate you and Soames hates you. Do us all a favour and die. Make it soon.’
Remembering every damning malicious word of Lorna’s, Delia flew into a rage. From somewhere deep inside her she let out a scream. It had hardly a decibel, but her wrath rendered up enough energy to allow her to push back the covers and drag her legs down over the edge of the bed. Bit by bit, grunting like a pig with half a nostril, she got her feet down to rest on the rug. She flopped her head to her chest and waited for her faintness to clear. Reaching out shakily she got a grip on a glass of water and slowly, slowly managed to take a few sips. It was risky owing to her burning need to urinate but she was desperate for sustenance.
‘Bitch!’ she gasped, her slumped body heaving in the effort. Her mind wasn’t hazy and she knew Lorna’s insistence and jeers about her being forgetful were lies. The fact was Lorna rarely put her meals close enough for her to eat and minutes later would laugh and take the uneaten food away. ‘You bitch, you’re starving me, trying to kill me. We’ll see about that.’
Delia had no notion that it was the day of the Summer Fair. Still believing she had been abandoned, but probably on a Sunday for a day’s jaunt, she was determined to get to the bathroom and then raise the alarm to her plight. Nurse Rumford might be attending her tomorrow but Delia wasn’t going to wait until then, to suffer any more of Soames’ neglect and Lorna’s cruelty.
Looking up she planned her way out of the bedroom by reaching out and grabbing hold of the chest of drawers, the wardrobe and the glass doorknob, she’d shuffle round the open door and get out of the room. If her legs failed her she would crawl to the bathroom on her hands and knees. Somehow she would do the necessary and get down the stairs on her bottom. Then she would haul herself up on to her knees at the nearest window and bang on the glass for help. Someone would be about sooner or later, neighbours going to and from the church or children outside playing.
It was proved that Nurse Rumford was right; she could use her legs. They were shaky and wobbly but inch by inch she was out of her room and lurching along the landing, with the aid of the wall and a tiny table with a potted fern on it. She had to pass the top of the stairs and then she could grab the bathroom doorknob.
She heard a clicking noise and paused to listen. She knew that noise. Someone had opened the kitchen door that connected to the passage below. A second later Lorna appeared, decked out like she had been to a wedding – but wait! She was wearing the new hat Delia had bought for the Summer Fair. Fury and indignation swept through Delia in burning waves. ‘Take off my hat, you thieving bitch!’ She hurled each word like a poisoned splinter down the stairs.
Lorna was pinned momentarily to the spot but then she hauled in the full confidence born out of her bitter resentment. She tossed her handbag on the gate-leg table. ‘So you’ve managed to get out of your stinking bed, have you, you sweating, smelly hag? You’d better move double quick if you want to make it to the bathroom or you’ll be fouling your prized Axminster, which you’re always boasting about, and if you do I won’t be cleaning it up. Instead I’ll rub your bleddy snooty nose in it, just like the bitch you are.’
‘You evil dirty maggot, that’s what I called you as a girl, maggot! And that’s what you still are, Lorna Barbary, a flea-ridden, mangy maggot.’ Wrath giving her super strength, Delia gripped her hands on the top of each stair rail. ‘You were the one who used to wet herself. The boys called you pissy-wissy, while you cowered in the playground blubbing into the hanky you kept in the pocket of your pissy knickers. You were a joke and you’re still a joke. I see it all now, what you’re up to, trying to take over my life. You must be mad if you think you can get the better of me. You’ve been feeding me with extra pills, haven’t you? Making Soames and the nurse believe my condition is worse than it is.’
‘Condition?’ Lorna scoffed, while facing Delia at the foot of the stairs, with her hands on her hips. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you! You were just putting on all that depression stuff to get people to feel sorry for you, but it backfired. No one cares about you, in fact they despise you and that includes Soames. He often says he couldn’t manage without me. And I’ll tell you something, you hard-hearted bitch, I am going to take your place. People were saying at the Fair how nice it was not to have you there, making nasty remarks about other women’s outfits, running down their kiddies just for skipping about and enjoying themselves. You’re a bigot. You make people miserable. You’re no use or ornament to the world, just a leach of people’s souls. No wonder you get on so well with the cold-hearted vicar. You’re two of a kind, neither of you has any right to step inside the church. No one would miss you if you dropped dead. Do everyone a favour and do it this very second.’
Lorna held her breath, and hoped and hoped. Delia’s arms were trembling with the effort to clutch on to the stair rails and her knees were sagging. Her overall weakness was getting the better of her. Fall, fall, fall . . .
Lorna moved away from the stairs. Delia was unlikely to be able to hold on much longer. She was too weak to stay on her feet and hopefully she would plunge down the stairs and break her wretched neck. Lorna made sure Delia did not fall on top of her.
The darkness of her fury overrode the rest of Delia’s senses, even her need to use the bathroom. Leaning forward she shrieked at fever pitch, ‘I’ll never let you take over my life or my husband, Lorna Barbary.’ But her balance was too precarious, her limbs too weak to bear her weight and her feverish mind too stretched to keep in balance and Delia crumpled and plunged headlong down the stairs.
As Delia screamed in shock and fear, Lorna wrapped her arms round herself and laughed and laughed in a sort of mad hysteria. All her efforts had worked and her dreams for revenge on her lifelong tormentor were coming true.
Delia’s plummeting weight hit the middle of the stairs with a crunching of bones and she tumbled over and over down the rest of the steps until she hit the passage runner in a twisted mass. Her neck had broken seconds before and she was dead.
Her leg flailed out and hit the tall umbrella and hat stand, which toppled over. At the same moment that Lorna turned to look down at Delia and assess her injuries, the heavy stand whacked Lorna full in the face. Her skull fractured, Lorna dropped like a millstone. Stunned and senseless, her brain bled in on her and two minutes later she too was dead.