‘Dad’s so desperate for intellectual stimulus and cheering up and Mother’s got nothing to do.’
This led to Etta further exhausting herself cooking and putting up for the night Sampson’s friends, or his ex-mistresses and their husbands. Street angel, house devil. Sampson managed to be polite, even genial, to them while remaining foul to Etta. Tiredness from continually disturbed nights made her absentminded, groping for names or why she’d come into a room, which irritated Sampson more than ever.
Early on in their marriage they had been nicknamed Sampson and Delicious because Etta had been so engaging. Even now Sampson’s visiting ex-colleagues and friends, many of whom he had cuckolded, squeezed her waist. Like Penelope’s suitors, they appreciated what a rich and charming prospect she would be, if anything happened to Sampson.
‘We know it’s just as tough for the carer,’ they whispered as they thrust ribboned boxes of Belgian chocolates into her hands.
‘So nice to see you relaxing, Etta,’ said their wives tartly. ‘London’s so tiring.’
Etta’s solace throughout her marriage, when Sampson had spent so much time away, had been her girlfriends. Now home all day, Sampson grew increasingly jealous, loathing it when they dropped in or chatted to Etta on the telephone. As she had felt compelled to refuse their invitations, they had drifted away.
Etta’s refuge was her exquisite garden, created over thirty-five years, in which her sense of design and colour had had the chance to blossom. She’d been working on a flame-red rose to be called Sampson when he’d fallen ill. In her greenhouse, she grafted plant on to plant, creating ravishing new species.
Her other comfort, apart from her bird table and reading poetry and novels, was Bartlett, her ancient Golden Retriever, who she took on increasingly slow walks round the countryside, wondering who would go first, Bartlett or Sampson. Was there life after Sampson? she was bitterly ashamed of wondering. A patient could live with Howitt’s, although it would increase its hideous grip, for twenty years.
2
One March morning, nearly two years after Sampson was struck down, Etta woke in rare excitement. Despite having been roused several times in the night to turn Sampson over and readjust his pillows, she remembered that the guest-free day ahead coincided with the first day of the Cheltenham Festival. If she could settle Sampson in his study with a video of an enthralling Test match or a Grand Prix, she could sneak off to watch the races in the kitchen – particularly as her pin-up and Sampson’s bête noire, Rupert Campbell-Black, had a horse running in a big hurdle race.
After that the day went downhill. Sampson, who insisted on opening the post, discovered a letter from one of her few remaining girlfriends enclosing Etta’s £100 winnings on a horse called Tigerish Tom: ‘Such a brilliant tip, darling, here’s your share. Hughie and I put on a hundred and celebrated with a wonderful dinner at the Manoir last night. Hope Sampson isn’t giving you a horrid time.’
Sampson’s roar of rage, ‘You’re not allowed to bet, Etta,’ rose to a bellow when he opened a receipt for another £100 from SHAC, the animal rights group battling to close down the laboratories in Huntingdon.
‘How dare you support them, Etta! D’you want to kill me? How can they ever find a cure unless they test on animals?’
Worse was to come. As a result of a warm dry spell, spartan Sampson had turned off the central heating. Last night the temperature had plummeted and now he was bucketing around in his wheelchair, demanding the whereabouts of the hot electric pad which eased the pain in his back.
Etta had just said she had no idea when, passing a dog basket in the hall, Sampson caught sight of the flex of the electric pad coming out from under the tartan rug on which Bartlett was happily snoring.
Sampson exploded. Etta fled to the kitchen. When she crept back later with Sampson’s midday pills and a glass of claret, she found him in a further rage. He’d been ringing some bloody woman all morning but she’d been permanently engaged. Yet when he thrust the number on a piece of blue writing paper towards her, she realized he’d been ringing his own number and her heart went out to him. Then it retreated as the telephone rang.
‘Sampy darling,’ cooed a voice as Etta answered it, ‘just to let you know it’s Cheltenham races and roadworks on the M4 so we probably won’t be with you before one.’