of any great interest, but how else is she to pass the time? She is the prisoner of her aging body. She can still walk with the help of a stick, but not far. Her hands can no longer undo buttons, or use a pen. She is permanently tired. Television bewilders her, the pictures jump about so much, and she canât hear what theyâre saying. Reading is now beyond her. Somehow she loses track of what sheâs read after just a few lines. Itâs become hard to hold a thought in her head for more than a few seconds. Not that her head is empty. Quite the opposite. As she sits in the garden for hour after hour, watching the pigeons, or the guinea pigs, or just the leaves on the trees shimmering inthe breeze, her mental world is tormented by nagging voices, as if she is the host to a discontented mob.
Where is
she
now? Sheâll be shuffling about in the kitchen, moving everything round so I wonât know where anything is. She knows I donât like it, which is why she does it. There should be two guinea pigs, whereâs the other one gone? Sheâs killed it, sheâs fed it poison, itâs the sort of thing sheâd do. Ah, there it is. Am I supposed to sit out here in the garden till I die? Sheâd like that, she wants me to die, then she can have my house. Thatâs her plan, and has been all along. Well, Iâm not dead yet.
Bridget Walsh, Mrs. Dickinsonâs carer, comes out of the house into the twilit garden.
âBetter be getting in, Mrs. D,â she says in her flat tones. âGetting quite nippy out here.â
âI wonât,â says Mrs. Dickinson. âYou can go away.â
âNo, I canât,â says Bridget. âI have to see you safe in bed.â
âIâm not going to bed,â says Mrs. Dickinson.
Sheâs tired and she longs to be in bed, but stronger than her need for sleep is her will to resist her carer.
âIâll give you a few more minutes, then,â says Bridget.
She climbs over the little fence into the guinea pigsâ run and starts shooing them into their hutch.
âDonât do that!â says Mrs. Dickinson.
âYou know they have to be shut up,â says Bridget, chasing the guinea pigs inside and closing the hutch door.
âI said donâtâI said donâtââ
Mrs. Dickinson is overwhelmed with rage and frustration. She wants to rise up out of her chair and strike Bridgetâs pale puffy face, but she lacks the strength. How dare she disobey an order! Who does she think she is?
My jailer, thatâs who she is. My prison guard. Oh, she knows just what sheâs doing. Those piggy eyes donât fool me. Shethinks she can break my spirit. She thinks she can turn me into a puppet who does her bidding. Sheâs got another think coming. Iâm not dead yet.
âIâll go and make a hot-water bottle for your bed,â says Bridget. âThen Iâll come back out and help you inside.â
âGo away,â says Mrs. Dickinson.
Bridget goes into the house.
Itâs getting hard to see in the garden now, and the air is cold. Mrs. Dickinson longs to be in bed with her hot-water bottle, but she refuses to give in to her jailer. This is a battle of wills that she knows she canât afford to lose. Once she starts doing what Bridget tells her to do itâll all be over.
Shivering now, she looks at the shapes of the chestnut trees against the darkening sky. There are two, standing like sentinels at the bottom of her garden. Every year they grow taller and reach out further. The rest of the gardenâwell, what can you say? A boy comes once a week for what he pretends is three hours, Elizabeth pays him for three hours, but he does nothing. So naturally the garden is dying, uncared for, reduced to bald lawn. All her plants, so lovingly chosen and tended over the years, all gone. The path to the back gate choked with weeds. No one goes that way any more. And to think