Cousin Sheila's Money

"When I go," said Cousin Sheila, "I should like to leave something
to the younger generation." She retrieved a crumb of fruitcake which
had found its way into her lap. "They've got more chance to enjoy it
than the older ones."
It was the only occasion when she ever mentioned her will to Susan's
mother, and at the time Susan's mother didn't pay much attention.
It was a hot summer's day, and there was a fly in the room, one of the
really big ones, with blue-black fur on its body and an audible buzz.
Cousin Sheila didn't come for a visit very often - she was breaking her
journey on the way to London, where the leading members of the amateur
theatrical group to which she belonged were meeting up to see a
performance of The Cherry Orchard. Susan's mother had gone to the
trouble of making a fruitcake specially, getting the Yorktown china
out, and transferring the jam into a little dish with a silver spoon in
it. But now here was this fly, trying to spoil everything. It had
already settled on Cousin Sheila's plate once, and it kept trying to
reach the jam.
"Go out, you horrible thing!" said Susan's mother, advancing slowly
towards it with a copy of the Radio Times.
She didn't want to kill it - she just wanted to flap it out of the
window. But the stupid creature wouldn't be flapped.
Susan herself was outside in the garden, shaded by one of the apple
trees, with her sketch pad and watercolours, trying to paint a back
view of the house. They could see her through the window. She was
nineteen years old. She had on a big straw hat, which made her look
slightly ridiculous, but her slim bare legs gleamed elegantly amongst
the greenery and the dappled shade.
Cousin Sheila was a big fat woman, unmarried, well-to-do. She was a
primary school teacher by profession, but always up to her ears in
amateur theatricals. She played the piano, made costumes, sometimes
took a minor part.
She kept her hair in a bun, wore her glasses on a cord round her neck,
and her chin was rather whiskery. The day was too hot for her, and a
dish of ice cream would have been more welcome than jam-on-bread and
fruitcake; perhaps even a glass of Pimms instead of the Darjeeling; but
she ate and drank a good deal all the same.
She never bothered about her weight. She was well past the marrying
age, and she loved her food. Besides, she hardly ever looked at herself
in a mirror, and when she did she always somehow managed to catch
herself looking thinner and less whiskery than was really the
case.
It was family gossip that brought them onto the subject of wills. One
of the matriarchs had died, and instead of leaving her money to her
only daughter, as expected, she had left it to a great-niece. The
daughter, a woman of sixty, was contesting the will, but Cousin Sheila
felt inclined to approve the matriarch's actions. She couldn't see the
point of leaving
money to people who were already set up in life.
But Susan's mother disliked the subject. She had never made a will of
her own, although she was in her mid-fifties. She thought there was
something morbid about it. So she didn't pay much attention to what
Cousin Sheila was saying. In any case, she was distracted by that
fly.
The human mind flickers between two different views of time. At one
moment it is immersed in the flow of events, the here-and-now,
sensations and impressions jostling for its attention. At another
moment it rises above the flow, forgetful of its immediate
surroundings, and gazes into the past or the future. Susan's mother,
preoccupied with her fly, might be taken to represent the first state
of mind, while Cousin Sheila, musing complacently on the time after her
own death, represented the second.

Cousin Sheila was a capable woman, fond of activity, and her thoughts
were always busy with plans. After her retirement, her interest in
amateur theatricals became all-consuming. She lived by herself in a
large semi-detached house, but she was never lonely. People came there
to rehearse, or to plan the details of a new production. There was
always something going on.
Being interested in the arts, she often thought of her grand-niece
Susan, although she had never seen her since that hot afternoon, which
was fifteen years ago now. Letters from Susan's mother told her that
Susan was married, still painting, but not making any money. Her
husband worked for the County Council, and wasn't very well paid
either. They were about to have their first baby.
Cousin Sheila had altered her will in Susan's favour.
It was another hot summer afternoon. There were some people from the
theatre group due at seven. Sheila was going to play them, on her
piano, some short pieces by Satie, which she thought would make good
incidental music for their new production. They were going to have a
try at The Cherry Orchard. It was ambitious, but they believed in
stretching themselves.
She went into the kitchen, puffing slightly. She was very fat these
days, and the hot weather didn't suit her. Her ankles puffed up, and
she got big ridges of swollen flesh just above the rims of her shoes.
She couldn't sleep at night, even with the window open, which made her
feel woozy-headed all day. Never mind. The weather forecast said it was
going to be cooler tomorrow.
There was a patch of sunshine on the wall, just above the biscuit-tin.
She stood and looked at it while she was waiting for the kettle to
boil. The people from the theatre group would be here in a minute, and
she was running over the Satie pieces in her mind, so it took her a
while to realize that the patch of sunlight shouldn't have been there.
The back of her house faced east, which meant that at that time of day
the sun was round the other side. The kitchen should have been in
shade.
Once she realised this, she came out of her abstraction and began to
concentrate properly. Just at that moment, the patch of sunlight began
to ripple, as if smoke were passing through it. Patterns of wavery
shadows were running upwards with increasing rapidity. She stood and
stared at it, wondering what the explanation could be. It crossed her
mind that perhaps she was imagining the whole thing.
Then a kind of shutter came down, interrupting everything.
The back of her house overlooked a valley, so there was a clear view
across her back wall to the houses on the other side. The evening sun
was shining on a half-open window in the top storey of one of these
houses, built on slightly lower ground than her own, and the glare was
being reflected with great brilliance straight into Cousin Sheila's
kitchen. What caused the rippling effect is uncertain. Perhaps it was
heat-haze. But as soon as the angle of the sun changed, the patch of
sunshine on the kitchen wall grew fainter and went out. Within a couple
of minutes it was gone.
By that time Cousin Sheila was on the floor.
The kettle was boiling, and someone was ringing her doorbell. She
tried to think what was going on, but her thoughts were distorted and
disconnected. Why was she looking up at the ceiling? Was she in bed?
No, this was the kitchen and there were things to do. Something had
happened. She couldn't work out what. There were big chunks missing
from the pattern all of a sudden.
A fragment of Satie drifted into her memory. Then the shutter came
down again.

The baby woke at two o'clock in the morning. Its cries roused Susan,
who pushed back the duvet and sat up on the edge of the bed, rubbing
her face. She'd been dreaming something about an animal trying to
escape from a trap.
She stood up and lifted the baby from its crib, which was next to her
side of the bed.
Her husband surfaced with a groan, and heaved himself onto one elbow.
"Is she all right?" he inquired in a croaky voice. "Does she want
changing?"
"I should think so." She unwrapped the blanket, which was halfway off
in any case, and had a sniff at the baby's rear end. "Yes."
The baby was less than two months old, and at this stage they fed and
changed it every time it woke. But it was a good sleeper, and usually
only woke two or three times a night. Susan's husband did the changing,
because she had to do the breastfeeding.
He switched on the lamp at his side of the bed, and got out. "I'll
fetch some warm water."
While he was in the bathroom, the central heating came on, with a soft
thump followed by a thrumming noise. The boiler was downstairs in the
kitchen, directly beneath their bedroom. The radiator and the pipes
made a series of ticking and pinging sounds as the hot water began to
circulate.
It was January. The year before, prior to the installation of the
central heating, they would have been sleeping with two duvets on the
bed, probably in thermal underwear, and discovering frost-patterns on
the insides of their windows when they got up. But Cousin Sheila's
money had come through just in time, and the house was now comfortable
even in the coldest weather. They also had Sheila to thank for the fact
that the baby's things were all new rather than second-hand: the crib,
the buggy downstairs, the baby-bath, the sterilizer in the kitchen, all
the clothes... And they hadn't used a quarter of it yet.
But Susan wasn't thinking about Cousin Sheila. Her thoughts were
completely taken up with the baby. It was crying in a muffled,
complaining, half-asleep way, rolling its head from side to side and
struggling feebly in her arms, with its eyes screwed up because it
didn't like the light. It wanted a feed, but she didn't want to get it
settled on the bosom, then have to take it off again while its nappy
was changed.
Her husband came back with the warm water. He laid out the
changing-mat on his side of the bed, and she passed him the baby. It
redoubled its protests when he put it onto the cold plastic and began
to undo its poppers, but then, as was its habit, it went silent when he
took off its nappy. It was used to the light by now, and stared up at
the ceiling with wide-open eyes, dark blue and mysterious, almost as
unreadable as the eyes of a wild animal.
Babies aren't aware of the past and the future, perhaps not even fully
aware of themselves, only of big, powerful, unformed sensations and
needs. Their identity is like a dark pool. Gradually proper human
thoughts begin to emerge, like silvery bubbles from the depths. In the
end they form a bright froth which covers the surface.
While the baby was being changed, Susan paid a visit to the bathroom.
On her way back she paused momentarily on the landing, which was unlit.
There was a lozenge of moonlight on the floor by her feet, with the
shadows of a few nodding ivy-leaves round the edge. As she watched it,
the lozenge dimmed and went out.
She experienced a sensation of impermanence. Before she fell pregnant
she had been starting to feel middle-aged. She was thirty-five years
old. But since the birth she had been feeling incredibly young, as if
everything were starting afresh for her. Only, the time was going so
quickly. Soon the baby would be grown, and she would be old.
But there was no point worrying about the future. There was too much
to be done in the here-and-now.
She went back to the bedroom and breastfed the baby, while her husband
returned to his slumbers.
The baby's name was Sheila.