The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, Marianne Cronin [top fiction books of all time txt] 📗

I first came here, and even when I was wearing it, I spent most of my time asking people what time it was and then asking again because I didn’t believe the reply. I thought I’d been in the May Ward for two months, only to find out it had only been a couple of weeks.

But that was several years ago.

After that morning, I waited for seven weeks for New Nurse to get back to me about the art room. I became anxious, frustrated, desperate, and then at peace with her absence. In that order. Twice. In the fifth week that I was waiting, I mentally designed the art room in my mind, using The Temp’s descriptions. I never forgot the windows. The Temp had said there were large windows on either side of the room. In the weeks that I waited, the windows became larger and larger until the whole back wall of the art room was one huge open window. The other side became a wall constructed entirely of paintbrushes – hundreds of them sticking out from the wall, just waiting to be chosen.

By the sixth week, I started to get excited again. I rehearsed in my head what I would say when New Nurse arrived to take me there. I deliberated over which pair of slippers I would wear (Everyday Casual or Sunday Best?). By week seven, I was calm and ready. With every day that passed, my confidence grew. I no longer needed to plan or imagine. She would come. New Nurse would come for me.

‘Sorry I took so long,’ New Nurse said when she came back. ‘I hope you weren’t waiting all this time?’

‘I was,’ I said. ‘But it’s okay, you’re here now.’

New Nurse checked her watch. ‘God … two and a half hours. Sorry, Lenni.’

I smiled and shook my head. The hospital is a cruel mistress. The International Date Line runs somewhere between the end of the May Ward and the nurses’ station. The only way to fight Hospital Time is to never fight it. If New Nurse wanted to claim that she had only been gone for two and a half hours, then I would let her. People start to worry if you fight Hospital Time. They ask you what year you think it is and if you remember the name of the Prime Minister.

‘Sorry about the wait, but it’s good news,’ she said, ‘I can take you down there this afternoon.’

Without paying attention, I slipped on my slippers and then discovered my feet had chosen Everyday Casual instead of Sunday Best. Well, it’s their decision after all.

‘Shall we?’ she asked as I closed up my dressing gown.

‘We shall,’ I said, and I took her outstretched arm.

Survival instincts are incredible things. I’ve taken to memorizing the routes to everywhere I go from the May Ward. I think my subconscious is worried that I am being held captive. So I can tell you that to get to the art room from the May Ward you go left at the nurses’ station and down a long corridor, through a set of double doors and straight down another corridor, you turn right, and then you go down a long corridor. Then you come to a corridor crossroads and take a left and go up a very slightly inclined hallway. The art room is on the right. It’s a nondescript door, but that’s fine by me. The doors that don’t make a show of themselves usually have the best stuff behind them.

New Nurse knocked and gave the door a push and there it was – the patient art room, and it was all waiting. The desks were white and waiting for spills and scratches and stains. They might hurt as they went on – like tattoos – but they would make each of the tables unique, and for the dying artists they would be poignant reminders of hands that held and painted and cut and inked. The chairs were waiting to cradle the poorly – to have the odd leg wrapped in plaster rested across them. The windows were there as promised – two of them. Most hospital windows are frosted to prevent captives from seeing out and to protect outsiders from seeing in. But the art room windows were clear and wide and the sun was streaming in through them as if, like me, it were excited to find a new room it had never been inside before.

Sitting behind the teacher’s desk in front of the whiteboard was a woman, and she was waiting too. She had a black slate sign in front of her and a paintbrush in her hand. She stared down at it. Sensing she was no longer alone, she jumped and laughed at the same time.

‘God, sorry!’ she said. ‘How long have you been there?’

‘Oh, we didn’t mean to intrude, we’re here for the art class,’ New Nurse said.

‘I’m Lenni,’ I said.

‘Hi. Pippa.’ The woman shook my hand.

‘I can take it from here,’ I whispered to New Nurse, and she nodded and left.

‘Oh … er … oh.’ Pippa stared at the door. ‘Is she coming back?’

‘Nope. They said the classes last an hour.’

‘They do,’ she said, pulling up a chair so I could sit beside her at the desk, ‘but they don’t actually start till next week.’

There was a silence.

‘But no matter,’ she said brightly, ‘you can help me with this.’

How can I describe Pippa? Pippa is the kind of person who would give 30p to a stranger at a train station so they could use the loo. The kind of person who isn’t afraid of the rain and enjoys a Sunday roast. The kind of person who seems like she might, but doesn’t actually, own a dog. A sandy one. Pippa is someone who makes her own earrings for special occasions, and who has hundreds of incredible paintings that have yet to be seen or sold because she hasn’t quite figured out how to use her own website yet.

I sat next