Escape from Shangri-La (9 page)

The doctor came back one evening to give Popsicle an injection, just to help him along, I was told. I was sent upstairs for a while. They wanted to talk to the doctor in private. I heard the hushed discussions down in the kitchen, but the tap was running or the kettle was boiling and I could make no sense of what they were saying.

At school it took a few days to screw up my courage before I could bring myself to do what I had to do, to say what I had to say. Shirley Watson knew it was coming. There was guilt written all over her face. She couldn't hide it. Day in, day out, I had eyed her from across the classroom, from across the playground, just to let her
know that I knew it was her that had sunk the
Lucie Alice
, her and her friends. At first she tried to stare me out, but each time I won the battle of the eyes, and she'd have to look away.

I waited for my moment. It came in break one day when I saw she was alone. I walked right up to her. We were face to face now. Somehow my courage held firm. ‘Why? What did you do it for?' My voice was steadier than I dared hope. ‘My grandad made me that boat. It took him weeks and weeks. What you did, it's made him ill, really ill. Does that make you feel good?' I looked her full in the eye, unflinching. ‘Well, does it? Does it?' Then, without a word, she turned and ran off.

As I went home that afternoon I was singing inside with triumph. I told Popsicle all about how I'd faced down Shirley Watson. I wasn't sure how much he understood, but he seemed to listen. After I'd finished he just touched my face, and smiled wanly. ‘Lucie Alice,' he said. ‘Lucie Alice.' And that was all.

If there were warnings of what was about to happen, then I didn't see them. Perhaps I didn't want to see them. For a week or so over half-term, a nurse came each day to see to Popsicle, and the doctor was in and out almost daily too. I would see my mother and father walking around the garden, deep in earnest discussion
from which I was always excluded. There would be long knowing looks across the table at supper, and my father, I noticed, was being unusually attentive and kind towards Popsicle.

I had just come home from school. I was hanging up my coat in the front hall. I remember thinking how odd it was that both cars were parked outside, that my father and my mother must both be home early. They were waiting for me as I walked into the kitchen. She should have been at school. He should have been at work. Something was definitely wrong.

‘Where's Popsicle?' I said, dumping my bag on the floor.

‘Sit down, Cessie,' said my father. ‘We've got something to tell you.' Then he was looking across to my mother for help.

‘It's Popsicle, Cessie.' She was trying to tell me something she didn't want to tell me. ‘Don't worry, it's nothing terrible,' she went on. ‘It's just that . . . just that we've had to send him away for a while. We can't cope with him here, not like he is. He wasn't taking his pills like he should. He was just getting worse. We had to do something.'

‘What do you mean “send him away”?'

‘Well . . .' she began, and she wouldn't look at me as she spoke. ‘It's a sort of home for the elderly, a nursing
home where he can be looked after properly. He'll have everything he needs.'

‘Shangri-La,' said my father. ‘It's called Shangri-La. Lovely place. He'll be fine there, Cessie. It's what's best for him, honestly it is.'

‘Come to think of it,' my mother went on, ‘Cessie was asking about Shangri-La only the other day, weren't you, Cessie? Funny that.'

There was nothing funny about it, nothing at all.

FOR DAYS I WOULDN'T SPEAK TO EITHER OF THEM. As far as I was concerned they were both as guilty as each other. I spent much of my time alone in my room brooding over the dreadful thing they had done to Popsicle. They would come up, sit on the bed and try to talk me round. I had to understand that, at the moment, Shangri-La was the best place for him, and it was a perfectly nice place too. You couldn't hope for better. But I was deaf to all explanations, all excuses.

‘It won't be for ever, you know,' my mother told me. ‘Just for a while, till he gets better.'

‘Don't think badly of us, Cessie,' my father pleaded. ‘I know how upset you must be, but what else could we have done? The way he is, he needs proper full-time care. I've got to go out to work. Your mother's got to go
out to work. You've got to go to school. We just couldn't leave him alone in the house, not as he is. Remember the fire? It's no use carrying on like this, you know. It won't achieve anything, Cessie. It won't bring Popsicle home.'

But it wasn't only the sending away of Popsicle that grieved me, nor even where he'd been sent – that wasn't their fault – it was how it had been done, covertly, on the sly. I wasn't stupid. I could understand that Popsicle shouldn't be left all on his own. I could even understand that in his state of mind he could possibly do himself some accidental damage. But they had packed him off to Shangri-La, to the very place Popsicle most dreaded, and without even telling me. I could have warned them. I could have told them.

On the principle that I would never again let them have the satisfaction of hearing me play my violin, I waited until I was sure I was alone in the house before I began my practice. I always ended with ‘Nowhere Man', dedicating it each time to Popsicle, and promising him as I played that somehow I would get him out of Shangri-La. I could never play that tune without crying for him. It was while I was playing it one afternoon that I decided the time had come to
stop moping, and to do what I should have done in the first place.

I packed away my violin and got my bike out of the back of the garage. If I was to rescue him, then I had to get to see him. The first step was to find out where the Shangri-La nursing home was. I asked a postman. ‘Cliff Road,' he said, ‘on the coast road, going west out of town, top of the hill.'

It turned out to be a long way out of town, beyond the harbour, beyond the marina, a couple of kilometres at least. The hill was horribly steep, but I was determined to keep pedalling right to the top. Once I reached it, I got off, gasping for breath, and rested. There it was across the road – ‘Shangri-La. Residential Nursing Home for the Elderly'. Beyond the closed white gate was a driveway, and an avenue of trees, every one of them slanted and stunted by the wind. There were lawns and rhododendron bushes and, just visible from the road, a great gabled house, cream-painted with neat, white windows.

There didn't seem to be anyone about, so I opened the gate and wheeled my bike up the drive. The porch alone was as big as the front of our entire house. It had fluted pillars all around like a temple, and two stone lions glared at me from either side of the front door. I
pressed the brass bell and stood back. I didn't think I was frightened but I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. No one came. I rang again. Still no one came. I wheeled my bike round the side of the house and peered in at the first window I came to.

They were sitting around the room, ancient men and ancient women, some with their heads lolling in sleep, their mouths wide open; others staring vacantly into space, their hands trembling in their laps. A few were reading magazines. One of them looked up at me, looked straight at me I thought, but she didn't see me.

It was a huge square room with a high ceiling and a chandelier. On the walls there were pictures in gold frames of cart horses and sailing boats and village feasts, and beneath them the room was lined with grey-green chairs with wooden armrests. A television was on in the corner, but no one seemed to be watching it.

I was searching amongst the faces for Popsicle, but I couldn't find him, not at first. Only when he stood up and came walking towards me across the room did I know him. His cheeks seemed sunken, his skin sallow. His hand was reaching out towards me.

‘Cessie,' he mouthed.

A voice spoke from behind me. ‘And what have we
here?' Her grey hair was as starched and stiff as her white uniform. She was a thin-lipped, peaky-faced woman with sharp little eyes. ‘You do this often, do you, peering in people's windows?'

I ran for it across the lawn, leapt on my bike and was gone down the drive. I dismounted at the gate, fought with the latch that wouldn't budge, flung the gate back and at last made my escape. I never looked back, not once.

I wasn't going to give up. One way or another I had to see Popsicle. I had to talk to him, to tell him I hadn't been part of the conspiracy, that I'd known nothing at all about it. So that evening I broke my silence for the first time. ‘I want to visit Popsicle,' I said. ‘Even in prison you're allowed visits, aren't you?'

They seemed relieved that I was talking to them again.

‘Soon,' said my mother. ‘They said we should let him settle in for a while. But it's been two weeks now – we could go on Saturday, couldn't we, Arthur? What d'you think?'

‘Why not?' my father replied, and then he smiled at me. ‘Truce?'

‘Truce,' I said, but I didn't mean it.

I had several long days at school to endure before Saturday. Word had got around that Popsicle was up at
Shangri-La. It seemed Mandy Bethel's aunt worked there as a part-time nurse. Ever since I had confronted Shirley Watson, she and Mandy Bethel and the others were giving me a wide berth – thank goodness. But there were some who felt they had to say something. They were meaning to be sympathetic, but sometimes it didn't come out like that. ‘They're all really old up there.' ‘Must be horrible for him – with all those wrinklies, I mean.' ‘I've seen them out in their bus on outings. They look prehistoric, if you ask me.' And so on. I endured it as best I could, but it wasn't easy.

On the Friday morning, we had RE with Mrs Morecambe. It all got silly and out of hand, as it often did with Mrs Morecambe. Her crowd control was never much good, but at least she was always interesting. She was talking about Hinduism, about the transmigration of souls. Some people saw this as an opportunity to wind her up by suggesting what they'd most like to be when they came back in their next life. There were all sorts of ridicidulous ideas: elephants, kangaroos, dung-beetles, daddy-long-legs, even a flea. Finally she'd had enough. She banged the table. ‘It is not a joking matter,' she stormed, her eyes flashing. ‘It's about time some of you learnt that life is not one long joke, and nor is death either.' There was still some tittering. ‘You won't think
it's so funny when your time comes, and it will come. It comes to us all. I've got an aunt. She's up at the Shangri-La nursing home right now. And she won't ever come out. Just sixty. Been there five years now. Alzheimer's. She can't feed herself. Some days she doesn't even know who she is any more. She hasn't known me for two years.' Suddenly everyone was looking at me. Mrs Morecambe went on: ‘Believe you me, getting old is no laughing matter.' No one was laughing any more.

Mrs Morecambe called me up after the lesson. ‘It's not too bad up at Shangri-La, Cessie. They do what they can,' she said. So she knew too. ‘Don't let it worry you.' It was kind of her, but it was no comfort to me. The memory of Popsicle's pained face through the window haunted me night and day. His worst nightmare had come true, and I was to blame, in part at least. I had promised him he would never have to go to Shangri-La, and I had broken that promise. Somehow I would get him out of there. Somehow.

I thought about little else. I had the notion that Popsicle and I could steal away together in the middle of the night and make our way down to the railway station. We'd catch the first train out in the morning – it didn't matter where it was going. I had nearly a hundred pounds in the building society, enough to take us a long
way away. He could make ship models, and we could sell them. I'd look after him. He'd be fine. We'd both be fine. We'd find a house somewhere remote, somewhere no one would even think of looking for us.

I knew all along that it was a dream, but I clung to it all the same, and just hoped that there was some way I could make at least some of it come true.

I was still hoping, still dreaming as we drove up to Shangri-La that Saturday morning. We turned in off the road and up the drive. ‘See?' my mother was saying. ‘We told you, Cessie. Isn't it lovely? Wonderful views, rose gardens. They've got croquet too, look. And you should see inside. Library. Television room. Carpets everywhere. Paradise on a hill. Lovely views of the harbour. They don't call it Shangri-La for nothing.'

We weren't the only people visiting. Half a dozen cars were parked on the front drive, and on the front lawn they were playing croquet, with a couple of little children jumping the hoops as if they were hurdles.

‘Our future Olympic champions perhaps, Mr Stevens,' said a voice from behind me, a voice I recognised at once. Striding across the drive was the starched lady in the white uniform whom I'd met on my previous visit, the lady with the sharp little eyes and the thin lips. I tried to hide behind my mother.

‘I heard your programme yesterday evening, Mr Stevens. Excellent as usual, quite excellent. And who is this then?'

‘This is Cessie, Popsicle's granddaughter,' said my mother, stepping aside so that I was now completely exposed. ‘Cessie, this is Mrs Davidson. She's the matron here, and she's looking after Popsicle for us.' I need not have worried about being recognised. Mrs Davidson wasn't interested in me. She was soon deep in discussion with my mother and father. They'd forgotten all about me.

‘It's early days,' Mrs Davidson was saying, ‘but your father's making very good progress already, Mr Stevens. He can be a bit cantankerous, of course, but we're used to that at Shangri-La. He still won't take his pills, but there we are. You can lead a horse to water . . .'

‘But is he eating better now?' my mother asked.