‘Oh, just in my feelings, I think. He said to let him know tomorrow morning how things are. He more or less asked me not to phone him in the middle of the night. He said if Valentine dies, just to phone him at home at seven. He isn’t really heartless, you know. He still thinks it would be easier on me if Valentine were in hospital, but I know the old boy’s happier here. He’s peaceful, you can see it. I just know he is.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
She insisted on making me a cup of tea and I didn’t dissuade her because I thought she needed one herself. I followed her into the brightly painted blue and yellow kitchen and sat at the table while she set out pretty china cups and a sugar bowl. We could hear Valentine breathing, the slow rasping almost a groan, though Nurse Davis, Dorothea said, had been an absolute brick, injecting painkiller so that her brother couldn’t possibly suffer, not even in some deep brain recess below the coma.
‘Kind,’ I said.
‘She’s fond of Valentine.’
I drank the hot weak liquid, not liking it much.
‘It’s an extraordinary thing,’ Dorothea said, sitting opposite me and sipping, ‘you know what you said about Valentine wanting a priest?’
I nodded.
‘Well, I told you he couldn’t have meant it, but then, I would never have believed it, this morning a neighbour of ours – Betty from across the road, you’ve met her, dear – she came to see how he was and she said, did he get his priest all right? Well! I just stared at her, and she said, didn’t I know that Valentine had been rambling on about some priest our mother had had to give her absolution before she died, and she said he’d asked her to fetch that priest. She said, what priest? I mean, she told me she never knew either of us ever saw a priest and I told her of course we hadn’t, hardly even with our mother, but she said Valentine was talking as if he were very young indeed and he was saying he liked to listen to bells in church. Delirious, she said he was. She couldn’t make sense of it. What do you think?’
I said slowly, ‘People often go back to their childhood, don’t they, when they’re very old.’
‘I mean, do you think I should get Valentine a priest? I don’t know any. What should I do?’
I looked at her tired lined face, at the the worry and the grief. I felt the exhaustion that had brought her to this indecision as if it had been my own.
I said, ‘The doctor will know of a priest, if you want one.’
‘But it wouldn’t be any good! Valentine wouldn’t know. He can’t hear anything.’
‘I don’t think it matters that Valentine can’t hear. I think that if you don’t get a priest you’ll wonder for the rest of your life whether you should have done. So yes, either the doctor or I will find one for you at once, if you like.’
Tears ran weakly down her cheeks as she nodded agreement. She was clearly grateful not to have had to make the decision herself. I went into Valentine’s sitting-room and used the phone there, and went back to report to Dorothea that a man from a local church would arrive quite soon.
‘Stay with me?’ she begged. ‘I mean… he may not be pleased to be called out by a lapsed non-practising Catholic’
He hadn’t been, as it happened. I’d exhorted him as persuasively as I knew how; so without hesitation I agreed to stay with Dorothea, if only to see properly done what I’d done improperly.
We waited barely half an hour, long enough only for evening to draw in, with Dorothea switching on the lights. Then the real priest, a tubby, slightly grubby-looking middle-aged man hopelessly lacking in charisma, parked his car behind my own and walked up the concrete path unenthusiastically.
Dorothea let him in and brought him into Valentine’s bedroom where he wasted little time or emotion. From a bag reminiscent of the doctor’s he produced a purple stole which he hung round his neck, a rich colour against the faded black of his coat and the white band round his throat. He produced a small container, opened it, dipped in his thumb and then made a small cross on Valentine’s forehead, saying, ‘By this holy anointing oil…’