She opened the door with her usual welcoming smile. \u201cPleased to see you,\u201d she said, and \u201cwill you have a cup of tea?\u201d Then we settled down to our weekly chat. She loves company. She attracts an amazing number of people, sometimes several at a time. When she was in hospital her ward was like a beehive, people coming and going and she holding court from the height of her bed. In a see-through nightdress, I hear it shocked one of her visitors.<\/p>\n
She needs company. She lives and thrives on it. She forgets her ailments when she has company. She briefly mentions what\u2019s wrong with her, always with a laugh. She never asks for sympathy. I saw her through all her dental troubles. Now she has dentures and no more problems.<\/p>\n
Her visitors provide her with a subject matter for conversation. She must have paraded most of her friends and family to me. I don\u2019t know what she says about me to others.<\/p>\n
She is used to a certain circle. Her parents-in-law were Sir and Lady. \u201cPoor old Lady Kate\u201d, she says, referring to her husband\u2019s mother. I forget what had happened to her. She knows all the titled people within a certain radius. Lady Frances Mould for example who at the age of seventy-eight \u2013 a mere chicken, Mrs Rivers says who is eighty-six herself \u2013 decided to give up driving because she doesn\u2019t always \u201cfeel the ground under her feet\u201d. Sold her car to a ninety-two-year old lady, would you believe it, Mrs. Rivers exclaimed. Lady Frances won\u2019t be able to provide transport for Mrs Rivers anymore, that\u2019s for sure. She will move around by taxi \u2013 money no object, I heard \u2013 and may not see Mrs Rivers much in the future. A peculiar person, Mrs Rivers said, who will consult a doctor at the slightest provocation. She used to take Mrs Rivers, who is a doctor, to one side and ask her opinion on a number of odd subjects concerning her health.<\/p>\n
Mrs Rivers adjusts easily to people of different circles. There is Sibyl who does clerical work for her and has at last been admitted to an almshouse. Mrs Rivers was very pleased when she heard that. She thought the good old soul deserved that after a long and difficult life. Sibyl had even managed a holiday, for the first time ever, I think she said, and she was delighted.<\/p>\n
She then gave me news about her son and his family who were going on holiday. I was relieved to hear that other families, too, split up for that purpose, her son going sailing in this country and his wife swimming and sunbathing in Greece, hoping to improve her back.<\/p>\n
Her brother was very ill, I heard next. She had had a telephone call from her sister-in-law, this hard-hearted and selfish creature. They were married late in life, first time for him, second time for her. He couldn\u2019t do enough for her, I gathered, and she was all set to enjoy herself, expecting him to drive her even when he wasn\u2019t feeling well, insisting on moving from the country into town, because there was more entertainment for her, going out on her own, if necessary. Anyway, Mrs Rivers felt she shouldn\u2019t talk about her and left it at that.<\/p>\n
She then asked me how the Orms were getting on. I gave her the latest news. She said \u201co dear\u201d. I told her it was almost getting too much for me. She said she wasn\u2019t surprized with all the things I was doing. The Vicar and the Doctor should work out a more permanent solution. Surely it was the Vicar\u2019s job to do these things.<\/p>\n
What about the Georges as well. Didn\u2019t I do too much there? I said I was going to cut down on time spent with them. The trouble was, I said, that people take one for granted and ask for more all the time. What about their family? I pointed out that they had done a lot. Of course, Mrs Rivers said, George\u2019s wife has been spoilt by all this attention he has given her for years. I told her about the impending wedding of their daughter and that George\u2019s wife was most worried about what she would wear on the occasion. Her speech is so bad now, that you can hardly hear her, but she wanted to discuss the menu with the caterers. When I went one evening to switch on the T.V. for her \u2013 George was in Paris \u2013 she expected me to come in time to give her her evening meal. Relief for the hospital staff. I suppose she likes to do what she can\u2026Mrs Rivers thought this was exaggerating and was pleased to hear that I had declined the request. She was hoping she wasn\u2019t too much of a burden for me. I assured her I quite enjoyed my cup of tea and a chat with her. \u201cSee you next week.\u201d \u201cBye-bye.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She opened the door with her usual welcoming smile. \u201cPleased to see you,\u201d she said, and \u201cwill you have a cup of tea?\u201d Then we settled down to our weekly chat. She loves company. She attracts an amazing number of people, sometimes several at a time. When she was in hospital her ward was like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-aloud"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}