Paul MCCartney. Monica Ali

Paul MCCartney

As far back as I can remember, my mother was a nurse. She became a sister on an NHS ward and later was a midwife, so my feelings about the NHS are obvious – it’s a fantastic institution. I know that anyone who works for them sees it as their vocation and is a real hero.

One of my outstanding memories is that, one night, in the winter in Liverpool where we lived in the midwife’s house, my mother was called out to assist a local lady in giving birth to her baby. I remember standing by the front door watching her leave the house on her midwife’s bicycle with a basket on the front and her medical case on the back. The road was covered in a good few inches of snow, but she had no alternative other than to go to the birth in her midwife’s uniform on her standard-issue NHS bicycle. She set off leaving tyre tracks in the snow.

That moment will be with me forever and encapsulates my pride in, and gratitude for, the National Health Service. We are so lucky in the UK to have such dedicated people to look after us all and no matter who you are you can still benefit from this fantastic system. Thanks NHS. Thanks heroes. Thanks Mum.

Love, Paul

Monica Ali

Mrs Antonova

A deep stillness had settled over the ward. The high winds of washing, dressing, toileting, consultant rounds, medicine rounds, food trolleys, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, bingo, Scrabble and hairdressing had subsided, leaving the place eerily becalmed. Yasmin looked around. The linen cage was almost bare, only a few white sheets and pillowcases hanging limply over the wire racks. The door of the equipment room stood open to reveal a leaning tower of commodes, loosely piled hoists and a jumble of drip stands. Yellow holdalls of dirty linens lay like sandbags in front of the pharmacy cupboard. Nothing moved.

Visiting hours were often like this. Yasmin tiptoed past the bodies, the closed eyes and open mouths, the rows of arms pinning the bedclothes as if rigor mortis had set in already. She hovered at a bedside, fighting the urge to poke and prod. There was no need to go round checking everyone was still breathing, disturbing everyone’s rest. It was only exhaustion. Old age and sickness and sheer exhaustion, because washing and dressing started during the night shift at 5.30 a.m. If there were no visitors during visiting hours it was perhaps a blessing because the patients could get some sleep.

Something stirred. Yasmin turned to see Mrs Antonova struggling to sit up in bed.

‘Let me help you.’ She rushed across. Mrs Antonova’s ribcage felt so fragile beneath the brushed cotton nightdress, when Yasmin put her hands on her back.

‘Thank you, pumpkin.’ Mrs Antonova called everyone pumpkin, from the cleaners to the consultants. She was ninety-six years old and this was her third stay in hospital in as many months, this time following a fall at home. ‘Now, if you’d care to do me another favour, just get one of those pillows and hold it over my face. Don’t let go until you’re absolutely sure.’

‘I’m sorry you’re feeling that way,’ said Yasmin. ‘I can prescribe you an antidepressant to help if you’re feeling so low.’

‘I’m sure you can, pumpkin. But I’m not depressed.’

Yasmin sat down on the bed and took Mrs Antonova’s wrist. Her pulse was a little thready but nothing out of the ordinary for a patient with chronic atrial fibrillation and arrhythmia.

‘I’m not depressed, I’m bored,’ said Mrs Antonova. ‘I’m surrounded by …’ She peered around and Yasmin was struck by her regal bearing, even in her rucked-up nightgown, with her wig askew. ‘By that!’

‘Mrs Antonova,’ said Yasmin, ‘do you mind if I sit here with you for a while?’

‘Call me Zlata.’ Mrs Antonova, since her readmission, seemed devastatingly frail. Impossible now to imagine her being strong enough to push a trolley. Which was how she’d wedged the door handle of the television room for the protest she’d staged during a previous stay. But her voice was still full of mischief, and she winked at Yasmin as she said, ‘Man trouble, is it?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Yasmin, smiling, ‘nothing like that. Just thought we could keep each other company.’

Mrs Antonova tugged at her wig, making it even more lopsided. The aubergine-coloured curls, thick and shiny, contrasted impressively with her paper-thin, paper-dry skin. ‘Man trouble! I know it when I see it. Married five times, and so it goes.’

‘Five times!’ said Yasmin. Mrs Antonova, on a previous stay, had told her about three husbands: a Uruguayan dentist who turned out to be homosexual; an Israeli violinist who had spent two years in Treblinka and who, three days after a honeymoon at the Sea of Galilee, committed suicide by jumping in front of a train at Tel Aviv Savidor Central (it was the 9.45 p.m. to Hod HaSharon) and a civil servant from Bexley Heath who, Mrs Antonova indicated by a vague wave of the hand, was not worth talking about.

‘Yes, five. Do you know how old I was when I was first married? Sixteen. That’s eighty years ago.’

‘Goodness! I’d love to hear all about it one day.’ She should be catching up on paperwork while the ward was quiet. She should be snatching an opportunity to study for the MRCP exam or update her reflective practice on her e-portfolio. She was behind with everything.

Mrs Antonova leaned towards Yasmin. It was a risky manoeuvre and for a moment Yasmin feared she would topple sideways out of bed. ‘You are very busy, pumpkin. Thank you for the visit. It was lovely.’ She sounded like she meant it. Mrs Antonova looked her age, or rather, she had moved beyond the age where people guess an age (‘Doesn’t he look great for eighty-two?’) into a fearful zone of decrepitude that tends to evoke pity, not admiration. But her voice had not aged with her; it was strong and singsong. Playful.

‘I’m not busy,’ said Yasmin. ‘Tell me about your first husband.’

‘Dimitri Ivanovich Shestov was fifty-three years old when I married him, and I had just turned sixteen. Of course it wasn’t my idea to marry Dimitri, I had no say in the matter. I believe my father owed him money or something silly like that.’

‘How awful.’ Yasmin felt sorry Mrs Antonova’s only ‘visitor’ was a doctor. She felt sorry for the entire somnolent ward. The cancer wards, at visiting time, turned into a scrum. Cancer made you popular.

‘He was the love of my life,’ sang Mrs Antonova. Somewhere in the rubble and ruin of her body, Zlata, the sixteen-year-old bride, still lived. ‘He was a white Russian, an émigré, like me – do you know about the white émigrés, pumpkin?’

Mrs Antonova explained that she was a baby when her parents fled Moscow in 1921. Her father, Vladimir Antonov, was an academic. Her mother, Nataliya, was only twenty years old when they fled to Istanbul, and eventually Prague, Paris, London. She took with her baby Zlata, a Kornilov tea set and a determination to live in exile the life of a Russian noblewoman. The Kornilov teacups had little gold griffins for handles. The insides were fully gilded and the outsides were painted with seashells and flowers. ‘You know what we were, pumpkin? We were gypsies. Noble gypsies roaming Europe with our teacups and rye bread and Russian pride. Sometimes we had no bread. But Vladimir had his writing and Tashenka had her cups and they both had their pride. Pride, you know, is a very expensive commodity.’

Mrs Antonova fell silent.

‘So what happened with Dimitri?’

‘Who?’ said Mrs Antonova, closing her eyes.

‘The love of your life,’ whispered Yasmin.

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