old age

Who are you? What are you doing here? Get out! I don't want you here! Dorothy looks at her husband. She's angry. She stares archly over the top of her spectacles. George, tell him to leave. I don't want him in my house. George looks at me and he shrugs.

A minute later Dorothy is laughing. She's telling me about Baden Baden.


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George gets ill and Dorothy has to go into a home for two weeks. The home is chock full of people, sitting in silent lines, watching television. They look defeated. Dorothy asks me to take her with me. She wants to go home. She asks me what they've done with George. She's angry with George. She doesn't understand why he's left her here. All she wants to do is go home. As I get up to go, she reaches out and tugs at my sleeve, and says, Please, darling, just take me with you.


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Dorothy dies peacefully in Winchester hospital. We all think that George will get a second wind, now he doesn't have to care for her, day in, day out. He doesn't. He's losing energy. His skin gows pallid. It greyens. Even going to the shops tires him out. He has to stop for breath on the way back. It upsets him. He's tired of it all. He knows it. Less than a year later, George dies in a hospital on the outskirts of London.

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George told me about the things he used to do when he was young. How he loved speed. How they'd hook a stick to the back of the tram in Ipswich and let it pull their bicycle along. How he'd cycle to the coast before breakfast for a swim in the sea and then come back again to work. How exciting it was to drive a car for the first time. Dorothy would always tell him to go slower. He never did.