Mrs Blewitt and the Birds

Mrs Blewitt lies between white sheets in a white room filled with light. She lies very still. The slightest movement, the blink of an eye, the quiver of a lip, demands an effort that is almost beyond her. She is aware of her hands, inert but there at her sides. She knows her legs taper away into the distance at the end of the bed. She seems to have lost touch with her feet. But deep within the stillness of her body, Mrs Blewitt is very much alive.

It's been like this, how long? Days, weeks maybe? Or only hours? Since her fall, since the day the world went black. She'd come out of the blackness in this bright, white room. She can see the light through the opacity of her eyelids. Her ears note the shifting of the curtain in the wind, the swing of the door, footsteps coming and going.

She can hear voices around her, Helen asking, ‘How long, do you think?’

And another woman answering, ‘It's hard to say. Not long.’

‘She'd not say that if she knew I was listening,’ Mrs Blewitt thinks.

Helen comes then and sits down beside her. Mrs Blewitt can smell the familiar apple sweetness of her. Old roses. Roses like the one that used to grow in the garden where Helen was born. Helen smells like Rosa Albertine.

Helen takes her mother's hand in both of hers and Mrs Blewitt feels the warmth of her touch. She summons her strength and opens her eyes. She sees that Helen is weeping. Mrs Blewitt focuses her mind on her hand. She wills it to move, to close on Helen's fingers, to give a little squeeze to tell her she's still here inside. It was so easy to do before the blackness but now nothing seems to move. Still, there must have been a tremor, a flicker in the old bones, because Helen looks up suddenly and smiles at her. Mrs Blewitt smiles too. Her lips barely tremble but the smile's there behind her eyes and she knows Helen can see it.

page 153

‘I'll be back tomorrow Mum. You just keep on getting better and we'll have you home in no time.’

How long ago was that? A year? A day? Or have there been more visits since? There's no measure of passing time in the white room. No clock, no calendar. Only the waxing and waning of the light beyond the blind and the ebb and flow of sleep.

The girl in the white cap comes and goes with her thermometer and pills. Mrs Blewitt knows there is a name for white-capped girls, but the place where the words were kept has become a blank screen. She focuses her mind on the cap and the uniform. A word floats onto the screen. Nurse. The white-capped girl's a nurse. Mrs Blewitt smiles to herself at this small triumph.

‘Can you hold the ball Mrs Blewitt?’ The nurse has come with another woman, a woman with no cap. ‘That's right, now give it a squeeze. A little more? Yes, hold it now. Very good.’

The nurse can play the same games.

‘Can you hold the brush Mrs Blewitt? Now see if you can brush your hair?’ But the arm can't lift that far and falls back onto the pillows. That game's too hard, too hard.

It's warm in the white room. The nurse undoes the catch and raises the window just a little. Air from outside drifts into the room bringing the scent of leaves and damp earth.

‘It's a nice day out there. When summer comes we'll wheel you out onto the balcony,’ she promises.

Mrs Blewitt can hear a sound like gentle rain. Poplar leaves pattering together in the breeze. Ah! The poplars are in leaf. It will soon be summer. A stronger gust and the sound is the rush of river water over stone, and Mrs Blewitt is back behind the little house where she lived as a young wife, pegging the nappies on the line while the wind roars through the three great poplars in the field beyond. Sheets flying in the wind like sails, the poplars bowing and soughing against the sky. And she, unwatched, arms raised, is dancing too, swaying with the trees, her hands full of clothes pegs and the baby laughing in the pram.

page 154

Mrs Blewitt can hear voices. Helen and the nurse are talking about her. If she opens her eyelids just a little she can see Helen's head silhouetted against the white wall.

‘She's made some progress,’ the nurse is saying. ‘But it's very slow.’

Slow! Mrs Blewitt is indignant. She can tell where her feet are now. She can even wiggle her toes.

‘We think perhaps she's lacking in motivation.’

Motivation indeed! Mrs Blewitt would like very much to tell the nurse a thing or two right now. Like what she thought of that custard she was fed for lunch. And to prove she can do it, she makes an effort, opens her eyes and smiles at her daughter.

Mrs Blewitt wakes to the call of a bird. It's very early. The light in the white room is dim blue-grey. The air coming in through the tiny crack of open window is sweet and cool. Yes, there it is again, the call that woke her. A tui sounding its three clear notes to welcome the rising sun. It calls again and a thrush sings in reply.

More thrushes start to sing, one then another, and then the blackbirds and all the smaller birds join in until the world outside the window becomes a choir of singing birds. Summer's coming, Mrs Blewitt tells herself, summer is almost here. She breathes deep the clean new morning air and sees herself a girl again, out before the sunrise, slipping from her bedroom window into the dewy garden when no one else was awake. Birds talked to her in those young days. There was one thrush in her mother's garden that called her by her name.

‘Edna, Edna, Edna Grey, Edna Grey. Come and see, come and see.’

And she'd go, bare feet on the dewy grass between the lavender and the gold and purple irises, pink rose buds waiting for the sun. And she'd dance on the lawn, making rings of small footprints in the dew.

Then, as the rising sun sent fingers of yellow light down through the trees and the birds fell silent, she'd run to the kitchen door and her mother would laugh and say, ‘Dabbling in the dew again Edna? Come in and warm your toes.’ There in the toast-smelling kitchen page 155 she'd sit on a stool and hold her feet to the glowing grate of the old coal range.

But the birds' chorus has ended now. Mrs Blewitt is back in the white room. The light on the blind has turned from grey to gold with the sunrise.

The day is sunny. The nurse has opened the window wider now. She's raised the blind, but all Mrs Blewitt can see is the sky. Yet she knows the unseen garden. She breathes the green summer smell of cut grass. Her ears measure the length of the lawn from the time it takes the mower to come and go. She can hear the poplar leaves, quite close above the window. She can hear gravel paths scrunch under shoes.

The mowing is finished. A thrush is singing, ‘Edna, Edna, Edna Blewitt, Edna Blewitt.’ The scent of jasmine comes drifting up into the white room and she's back with her Tom under the lychgate by the church. Tom in his dungarees, just off the farm, the carthorse nudging at his shoulder, a laugh in his green eyes. He'd picked a sprig of jasmine then and put it in her hair and she'd reached to fasten it with a hair-slide. The wind whirled loose strands across her face, and their hands touched, mixed with the wild silk of blown curls. He'd kissed her, there in the scent of jasmine, and laughed and brushed the blowing curls from her face. She'd laughed at him laughing, and looked into his eyes and had seen for the first time that they were gentle and kind.

She knew then that she would be safe with Tom. She knew that they would laugh together and be happy. So when he asked her—was it then or some time later?—‘And how would you like to be a farmer's wife, Edna Grey? How would you like to become Edna Blewitt?’ she'd said, ‘Yes, Tom, I'd like it fine.’ And they were married in the narrow wooden church with the lychgate and the jasmine, and they promised ‘Till death do us part’ little knowing how quickly death would part them.

‘I have to go and fight,’ he'd told her. ‘We've got to keep the world safe for the children.’

But when the war was over and the boys came marching home, there was no soldier coming in her doorway, no Daddy for her baby.

page 156

‘A brave young war widow.’ That's what they called her. That was the way it was, back then. They told you you were brave so brave you were, however you felt inside.

Helen has brought roses. The scent of them is heavy in the white room. ‘These are from Moira's garden, Mum. She sends her love.’

Moira the darling grandchild. She always loved the flowers. Mrs Blewitt pictures her picking tiny violets in the sunshine, her chubby fingers clumsy on the slender stems. How could a little girl like that grow these scented roses?

But Moira's grown up now. She has a pack of chubby-fingered children of her own. Mrs Blewitt smiles at the tangles her mind makes of time. She breathes in the sweetness. Roses. Summer must truly be here.

‘Mrs Blewitt, Mrs Blewitt, Mrs Blewitt.’ The thrush who lives in the poplar trees is calling her from sleep. ‘Come and see, come and see, come and see.’ Mrs Blewitt tries to ignore him. It's very early still, barely light. But the other birds are joining in, ‘Edna, Edna, Edna.’ ‘See the garden, see the garden,’ ‘Summer, summer, summer's here.’

Mrs Blewitt moves her feet under the sheet. Very slowly and with great concentration, she rolls onto her side. One hand reaches to grasp the side of the bed.

‘That's the way, that's the way,’ calls the thrush.

She takes a deep breath, and then begins to draw up her knees. It's a struggle, but all the birds are shouting encouragement now. ‘Good on ya, good on ya.’ ‘You can do it, you can do it.’

The greatest effort will be getting herself upright. Slowly, slowly, she eases herself onto her elbow.

‘Yes, yes yes yes yes,’ the sparrows call.

‘Be quick, be quick, be quick, be quick,’ the thrush tells her.

Mrs Blewitt is sitting now. She has moved her feet over the edge of the bed. She's sitting up, ready to launch herself towards the garden.

‘Come and see, come and see,’ another thrush encourages her.

Her feet are on the floor. Somehow, they still know how to stand. But her knees, her knees don't want to hold her up. Clinging to the page 157 bed, she inches her way down until she is holding the rail at the foot. There's a chair there. Slowly, slowly she moves her hands to grip this new support. Beyond the window the chorus of birds is deafening. They are shouting at her now, words lost in the music.

From the chair she must cross a space to grasp the handle of the balcony door. She waits, gathering her strength.

‘Do it now, do it now,’ the thrush commands, and she launches herself across the space and arrives safe, leaning against the door. She clings to the handle, panting. A moment of black dizziness, then her heart slows again, her head clears. There's a key she must turn. Her right hand is best, but it's busy gripping tight to the handle. Mrs Blewitt makes one last, tremendous effort. Every move must be thought out. She must shift her weight so she won't fall, change hands on the door handle and then, with utmost concentration, get her right hand to turn the key. It takes a long time. The key is stiff. There's no strength in her hand. She's ready to give up, but the thrush shouts just in time, ‘You can do it, you can do it you can do it,’ and she does.

Yellow light is on the blind now. The sun has risen. The bird choir is over. Mrs Blewitt grips the door jamb with one hand and pushes down the handle with the other. The door swings out. She's on the balcony.

‘Look look looklooklook,’ a blackbird tells her. And Mrs Blewitt looks down at the summer garden.

‘Seeeeeeeee? Seeeeeeeee?’ rasps a greenfinch.

She sees the sunlight on the dewy grass and the prints of the bare feet of a small girl out in her nightie to catch the first of the day. She sees the poplars, their leaves shimmering in the morning breeze and a young mother dancing under the clothes line while her baby laughs from the pram. She sees at the end of the gravel walk the jasmine arch and her Tom waiting there in his boots and dungarees. She sees the summer spread warm fingers over all.