In the Midst of Life

remarkable woman in her own right and had scores of friends. I was not the only one who enjoyed visiting her in hospital. She sat up in bed, or on a chair, knitting for anyone who wanted anything knitted – indeed, I have a jacket and my husband has two jumpers from this period! I looked around at the other old ladies in the ward and she seemed to be the youngest of them all. She was sitting upright, her back unsupported, her eyes bright, her skin clear, her hair nicely arranged – one would have thought she was a sprightly eighty-year-old. It was a joy to visit her, mainly because she was so interested in everything you were doing, and her memory was phenomenal. Most old people have short-term memory loss. Not Leah. She wanted to know the outcome of something I had told her during the last visit, of which she had remembered every detail. I told her I was going on a cycling holiday with my grandson, and when I next saw her, her first words were, ‘How did it go? Did you have fun? You were in the Cotswolds, weren’t you?’
    Everything interested her, and she remembered things I hadforgotten myself. And as for Scrabble! It was humiliating. I played many games with her and she beat me every time. In fact, she didn’t simply win; she wiped the floor with me. My husband played a couple of games with her, but then announced that he wouldn’t play any more because he didn’t like Scrabble. Men are not very good losers …
    Leah was a Jew, and the rest of her family was in Israel. She was obviously much loved because her daughter, who was seventy-eight, with a husband of eighty, and her grandchildren, in their forties and fifties, came to England regularly with their children, or phoned her every day from Israel. She was not one of those tragic figures, of whom I have seen so many, who are left entirely alone in their old age. Her family was very good to her, right until the end.
    Leah spent three or four weeks in the orthopaedic unit of the main hospital. This is much longer than most people stay, but she could not remain indefinitely because the bed was needed for emergencies and she was transferred to what one would call a long-term geriatric hospital. My heart grieved for her when I heard where she was going, because I knew the hospital, and it did not have a good reputation locally. That was, I think, because the buildings had formerly been the old workhouse infirmary, and they had a bleak and forbidding aspect – ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’ I approached the place with trepidation.
    As I found my way to the ward, my attitude changed. A pleasant young nurse directed me to Leah’s bed and several others smiled at me as I passed. Leah was just finishing her lunch. I saw that her head was bent over and her shoulders were shaking. I thought she was crying. With great concern I touched her shoulder and said, ‘Whatever is the matter, Leah?’ She looked up and at once I saw that she was not crying, but laughing!
    ‘I was just thinking about yesterday’s lunch. Pass me those tissues, will you dear, and I’ll tell you what happened.’
    She blew her nose and wiped her eyes.
    ‘The ambulance came to bring me here. Well, I was in the backwith a young man and we got talking. He was South African, so I told him that I had been there with my husband when he was working on the film
Gold
with Roger Moore and Susannah York. And would you believe it, it turned out that his father was a stunt man in
Gold.
Well, we had so much to talk about, swapping stories, and he was telling me about his family and how his father came to be in
Gold,
that we didn’t notice time passing. This hospital is only about a mile up the hill from the main one, but about half an hour had gone by. We had travelled fifteen or twenty miles, and neither of us noticed.’
    She had to have a little cough and wiped her eyes again before continuing.
    ‘Well, we got to the hospital and they lifted me out and carried me up to the ward. A nurse showed them the bed that was ready for me, and they tucked me in. Another couple of nurses made a fuss of me, checking to see I was comfortable, and then the nice young South African boy said goodbye.
    ‘It was nearly lunchtime, so they brought me lunch, which I ate, then they cleared it away, and I was just settling down for a little doze when a young lady doctor came over with a bundle of notes in her hand. She said she wanted to examine me, and pulled the screens around the bed.
    ‘Well, she