The Wonder Worker Read Online Free Page B

wasn’t clever enough. That was such a disappointment to her but she refused to let me go to the local comprehensive. She didn’t like comprehensive schools. In fact there were a lot of things she didn’t like—foreigners, the Labour Party, Roman Catholics, the tabloid press, bad manners, pierced ears, long hair on men, bell-bottom trousers,
Coronation Street
, Concorde, policemen with beards, litter, hamburgers and cruelty to animals. She was a real old battle-axe. She didn’t go to church. She said the Church of England was okay for the rites of passage because that was Tradition, but otherwise churchgoing was a waste of time—England was her religion really, I suppose, and she didn’t have room for another. She didn’t believe in God. But she believed in a Christian education because—” I stopped, diverted. “Wait a minute,” I said finally identifying the memory which had been niggling me. “That’s the New Testament you keep paraphrasing.”
    “It’s an occupational reflex. Why did your aunt believe in a Christian education?”
    “She said it was part of England’s culture and that those who ignored it would end up culturally illiterate. She believed in morality too and said free love was designed by men to do women out of their rights. She never minced her words. In fact she was beastly to me sometimes, but I know that was all my fault for being such a disappointment to her. I wasn’t the sort of child she could be interested in; I wasn’t clever or pretty. ‘You’re devoid of charm!’ she said once when I was depressed. I felt so awful letting her down after she’d done so much for me. She sent me to one of the best cookery schools to get my Cordon Bleu—she always tried to get the best for me, I suppose she thought it was her moral duty because I can’t think why else she would have bothered. She talked a lot about moral duty—and about integrity. That’s why she hated watching the politicians who were slimy on TV. ‘They’ve got no integrity!’ she’d say. ‘They wouldn’t recognise the word even if it was displayed in lights at PiccadillyCircus!’ Well, she stuck by her moral duty to me, I’ll say that for her. She was a bloody-minded old bag, but she was all-of-a-piece and she practised what she preached.”
    Nicholas merely said: “When did she die?”
    “A month ago after the last stroke—except that she hasn’t physically died because her heart’s still beating. She’s still alive,” I said in despair, and pressed my clenched fists against my eyes to smother the tears.
    VII
    I told him
about the succession of strokes which had slowly destroyed her health. I told him of my struggles with the Social Services to get some measure of nursing help during the day so that I could continue to work part-time to pay the bills. I told him how Aunt’s capital, always a modest sum, was now dwindling fast, especially since I had been obliged to give up my permanent job to look after her.
    “And then after the last stroke,” I said, “I found myself in an impossible situation. I couldn’t cope with the additional nursing which was required—she now has to be turned every two hours—and I found I was getting so tired as the result of lack of sleep that I didn’t have the strength for my temporary work. So I’m having to hire night-nurses but they’re so expensive that I’ve got to go back to work full-time—and that means I have to get nurses during the day as well to supplement the care provided by the Social Services, and I doubt if I can earn enough money to pay for all this—in fact I know I can’t, it’s a losing battle, it’s a nightmare with no end in sight, but I can’t abandon her, I just can’t—I’ve got to stand by her just as she always stood by me—”
    “Of course you’ve considered the option of hospital and free care under the National Health.”
    “That was never an option. She had a horror of the geriatric wards. One of her friends died there,