Unforgettable (Gloria Cook) - By Gloria Cook Page 0,42
gently chided her this morning. Lorna had listened from downstairs after Soames relieved her at the counter. ‘Too much sleep and lying about has made you lethargic. During the blanket bath your limbs were limp and you were a little uncooperative. Keep this up and you’ll start losing your muscle tone and will find it hard to use your legs. The doctor has cut down the dose of your sleeping tablets. I’ll talk to him about halving it again. Now, before you go I’ll walk you to the bathroom. I shall ask Miss Barbary to take away the commode and you may only have it at night.’
The trip to the bathroom had been quite a performance.
‘Come along now, Mrs Newton. Try to put your feet into your slippers. No, no, no, sit up straight or you’ll fall off the edge of the bed.’
Lorna had smirked, knowing from the nurse’s vexed tone that she, like everyone else in Nanviscoe, believed that Delia was exaggerating her symptoms, symptoms of depression that had never been there in the first place. She had lived all her life in the tyranny of jealousy and snobbery, which she had dumped gleefully on others. The women in Faith’s Fare had pushed her down firmly into her place and her malice had charged her to seek revenge, but rather than make people feel sorry for her they couldn’t really give a damn, which was true justice. Now Lorna treated herself by gloating over the shrew that had treated her with such cruel disdain.
‘You’ll never get yourself a man, Lorna. You’re too gauche. You walk like an oaf. Your hair is thin and dull, your eyes are squinty, and your eyebrows are too bushy, your figure is dumpy and as for your hands, ugh, they’re ugly. You’re hairy all over, double ugh! I’ve seen you in a bathing costume, believe me any man would be horrified to see your pale lumpy flesh, and as for the way your nose goes bright red in winter! You can’t dance. You can’t do anything clever. You haven’t even got a nice smile. You’ve nothing to attract a man; no money and no position. You’re only good enough to work in service and then only as a scullery maid. It’s the fate of being an old maid for you and you’ll just have to accept it.’
The jibes and insults Lorna had suffered had tormented her like nothing else had, not even when she was thirteen years old and the smelly old man next door had touched her in a very private and forbidden place. He had given her a threepenny piece not to tell anyone. Lorna had not told on him, but after spending the money on sherbet dabs she had been careful to keep away from the old bastard. When Lorna had cried to her late mother about Delia’s taunts, Mrs Barbary had patted her head. ‘Remember, my handsome, sticks and stones may break your bones but names can never harm you.’ It wasn’t much help to Lorna but she had held on to her mother’s other saying: ‘Just remember that the tide don’t go out unless it comes back in again.’ She clung to the belief that one day Delia would get her just deserts. Now that day had come, and Lorna wasn’t going to spare her.
She plonked the tray down on the bed table. ‘Wake up, sleepyhead, can’t believe you’ve dropped off again already,’ she said in a fake kindly voice. ‘I’ve made a nice spam sandwich for you and put in a little chutney. You’re partial to a bit of chutney.’
Lying on her back in the middle of the bed, her mouth wide open while she breathed adenoidally, Delia barely moved a muscle; one eyelid only flickered a little. It was no surprise to Lorna. She got the reduced dose of sleeping tablets down Delia’s throat every night – accompanied by a full dose of one of her own. Since staying under this roof Lorna had needed occasionally to drug herself out of her lonely torment, but since Delia’s self-imposed bed rest she didn’t need sedatives at all, and she revelled in Delia’s comedown. Soames had moved into the back bedroom and since Delia’s more dozy days he only looked in on her first thing in the morning, but in case he just happened to pop upstairs, Lorna kept up her soothing nursemaid tones.
Suddenly, Delia stirred and lifted herself up on her forearms, shaking and trembling. ‘I need the