27 March

I heard about a death in the village this morning. There are two old ladies, twin sisters, who live with their younger brother, the three of them unmarried and crammed in together in their shabby cottage. The brother has mental health issues, which I believe is the right way of putting it these days. He shambles amiably through the village, chatting to anyone he sees, his trousers baggy, his eyes curiously vacant. He is a harmless and genial soul, and I’m often grateful that he lives in this day and age, where he has a roof over his head, and no-one points and calls in the street. Or maybe he would always have been looked after, part of the community, everyone’s responsibility. I would like to think so. His sisters must be in their late seventies, identical only in their papery, powdered faces and faded gentian-blue eyes. Maisie is shorter than her sister, forceful, bullish in figure and attitude. She’s certain of herself, opinionated and bossy; the three of them are scions of the oldest and wealthiest local family (I’m not quite sure what the relationship is, but clearly this branch have fallen on hard times) and she doesn’t want you to forget it. She adjudicates at village shows, shooting stick in place, barking orders and intimidating people with her sheer force of personality. She is the antithesis of everything that I normally warm to in people, yet there’s something curiously touching about her refusal to be cowed by anything or anyone, her spirit indominitable despite the setbacks life has thrown at her. Her sister Barbara, taller and thinner, is gentler, softer, all trailing scarves and wispy hair, something pleading and mournful about her, all fluidity in contrast to her sister’s force. She always longed for marriage and children, yet neither came her way. She carries this regret around with her like an injured baby, holding it out for everyone to see. Maisie would have loved children too, she feels the loss keenly, she says. But you take what life throws at you and you get on with it, she told me once. It’s hard for me, such a product of the late twentieth century, my life abounding with choices, to recognise how circumscribed were the young lives of Maisie and Barbara. So little was expected of them in some ways, yet when the prepared-for life didn’t happen, they felt abandoned by their little world, marooned in isolation. “I was disappointed in love”, says Barbara, making me think of star-crossed lovers, of shotgun-wielding fathers and aborted assignations, or of fiancées who maybe left for war and didn’t return. “We never met anyone, stuck out here and with Robbie to take care of” is the forthright Maisie’s take on it. Maisie stared her loss in the face and put it to one side. Her life is busy, full of committees and societies and causes and people. Barbara’s isn’t. The strange thing is is that Barbara, who makes such a fuss of children, doesn’t connect with them. I’ve watched my own and other children stare unmoved as she clucks and fusses over them, patting their heads and marvelling at their growth. Yet Maisie they like – direct, slightly scary and too busy to take too much notice of them, they respond to her natural authority and rather gruff kindness. My daughter calls her the jewel lady, an oddly exotic name for such an unadorned woman, because the few times we have called at their tiny cottage, Maisie has chucked an old jewel box, complete with garnet necklaces, at her, and told her to play. She did.

It was Barbara who died yesterday, Barbara who never came to terms with the way her life turned out, who expected so much but got so little.

I’ve been thinking of another old lady today, one who I saw at a children’s party on Saturday. Some of the birthday girl’s extended family was there, and there was a very old lady sitting motionless in the centre of the festivities, presumably someone’s great granny or great aunt. When the children were playing pass the parcel, she suddenly reached out, grabbed the parcel and began to unwrap it greedily. The children were horrified; one or two cried. The adults were taken aback and took a moment or two to respond. Eventually the hostess gently took it off her and gave it back to the children. It wasn’t without its funny side, and my friends and I giggled afterwards, albeit with nervous laughter. But the look on the old lady’s face as the present was taken away from her stayed with me, and I thought of it today when I heard about Barbara. Maybe it is disappointment that does for us, in the end.