Nor did he leave her again until the morning, but watched over her,
whilst on the other side of the bed the old woman knelt, her face
pressed against a still hand, a battered, sullen effigy of grief.
3
From the beginning she had defied the regulations of the hospital, as
she had defied the rules of life, with an absolute success. The
inelastic, military system bent and stretched itself beneath her
good-humoured inability to believe that there could be any wilful
opposition, to her desires. The macaw had been a case in point, the
gramophone another. After tea the old woman set the instrument going
for her, and when the authorities protested, ostensibly on behalf of
neighbouring patients, it transpired that the patients rather liked it
than otherwise, and there were regular concerts, with the macaw
shrieking its occasional appreciation.
She inquired interestedly into her neighbours. She seemed less
concerned with their complaints than with their ages, their appearance,
and the time when they would return to the outside world. With a young
man on her right hand she became intimate. It began with an exchange
of compliments and progressed through little folded notes which caused
her infinite amusement to a system of code-tapping on the intervening
wall, sufficiently scandalous in import, if her expression were
significant.
The nurses became her allies in this last grim flirtation, unaware
apparently of its grimness.
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